jisdom and

PPT e Ta beh Yar ee Se

 

Stes Naha cabot Oh,

 
 

Cornell University Library

SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE GIFT OF

Henrg W. Saae

1891

 

 

A eas I a
Cornell ei. Library

PQ 2625.A25S2 1914

wii
WISDOM AND DESTINY
 

 

THE WORKS OF MAURICE MAETERLINCK
ESSAYS

Tue TREASURE OF THE HUMBLE

‘WIspom AND DEsTINY

Tue Lire of THE BEE

Tue Burizp TEMPLE

Tue DovsLe GaRDEN

Tue MEASURE OF THE Hours

DratTu

On Emerson, AND OTHER Essays

News or SPRING AND OTHER Nature STUDIES

PLAYS
SISTER BRATRICE AND ARDIANE AND BARBE BLEUE
Jov¥zELLE AND MONNA VANNA
Tue BLvE BirD, A FAIRY PLAY
Mary MAGDALENE
P&LLEAS AND MELISANDE, AND OTHER PLAYS
PRINCESS MALEINE
TuHE INTRUDER, AND OTHER PLAYS
AGLAVAINE AND SELYSETTE

HOLIDAY EDITIONS

The text in each case is an extract from one of

the above mentioned books.

Our FRIEND THE DoG

OLp-FASHIONED FLOWERS

THE SWARM

Tus INTELLIGENCE OF THE FLOWERS

CuRYSANTHEMUMS

Tue LEAF OF OLIVE

THOUGHTS FROM MAETERLINCK

 

 
Wisdom and Destiny

BY

MAURICE MAETERLINCK

Translated by

ALFRED SUTRO

e

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY
1914
Ss
fy
Copyright, 1898,

By Dopp, MEAD AND COMPANY.
TO
GEORGETTE LEBLANC

OFFER THIS BOOK, WHEREIN HER THOUGHT

BLENDS WITH MINE
INTRODUCTION

ee essay on Wisdom and Destiny
was to have been a thing of some
twenty pages, the work of a fortnight;
but the idea took root, others flocked to
it, and the volume has occupied M.
Maeterlinck continuously for more than
two years. It has much essential kin-
ship with the “ Treasure of the Humble,”
though it differs therefrom in treatment ;
for whereas the earlier work might perhaps
be described as the eager speculation of
a poet athirst for beauty, we have here
rather the endeavour of an earnest thinker
to discover the abode of truth. And if
the result of his thought be that truth and
happiness are one, this was by no means
the object wherewith he set forth. Here
he is no longer content with exquisite
visions, alluring or haunting images; he

vu
Wisdom and Destiny

probes into the soul of man and lays bare
all his joys and his sorrows. It is as
though he had forsaken the canals he
loves so well — the green, calm, motionless
canals that faithfully mirror the silent
trees and moss-covered roofs—and had
adventured boldly, unhesitatingly, on the
broad river of life.

He describes this book himself, in a
kind of introduction that is almost an
apology, as “a few interrupted thoughts
that entwine themselves, with more or
less system, around two or three sub-
jects.” He declares that there is nothing
it undertakes to prove; that there are
none whose mission it is to convince.
And so true is this, so absolutely honest
and sincere is the writer, that he does not
shrink from: attacking, qualifying, modi-
fying, his own propositions; from ad-
vancing, and insisting on, every objection
that flits across his brain; and if such
proposition survive the onslaught of its
adversaries, it is only because, in the
deepest of him, he holds it for absolute

vill
Introduction

truth. For this book is indeed a con-
fession, a naive, outspoken, unflinching
description of all that passes in his mind;
and even those who like not his theories
still must admit that this mind is strangely
beautiful.

There have been many columns filled
—and doubtless will be again —with in-
genious and scholarly attempts to place
a definitive label on M. Maeterlinck, and
his talent; to trace his thoughts to their
origin, clearly denoting the authors by
whom he has been influenced; in a mea-
sure to predict his future, and accurately
to establish the place that he fills in
the hierarchy of genius. With all this
I feel that I have no concern. Such
speculations doubtless have their use and
serve their purpose. I shall be content
if I can impress upon those who may
read these lines, that in this book
the man is himself, of untrammelled
thought; a man possessed of the rare
faculty of seeing beauty in all things,

and, above all, in truth; of the still
ix
Wisdom and Destiny

rarer faculty of loving all things, and,
above all, life.

Nor is this merely a vague and, at
bottom, a more or less meaningless state-
ment. For, indeed, considering this essay
only, that deals with wisdom and destiny,
at the root of it— its fundamental prin-
ciple, its guiding, inspiring thought— is
love. ‘ Nothing is contemptible in this
world save only scorn,” he says; and for
the humble, the foolish, nay, even the
wicked, he has the same love, almost the
same admiration, as for the sage, the saint,
or the hero. Everything that exists fills
him with wonder, because of its existence,
and of the mysterious force that is in it;
and to him love and wisdom are one,
“joining hands in a circle of light.” For
the wisdom that holds aloof from man-
kind, that deems itself a thing apart,
select, superior, he has scant sympathy —
it has “wandered too far from the watch-
fires of the tribe.” But the wisdom that
is human, that feeds constantly on the
desires, the feelings, the hopes and the

x
Introduction

fears of man, must needs have love ever
by its side; and these two, marching
together, must inevitably find themselves,
sooner or later, on the ways that lead to

goodness. “ Ehete comes a moment in~

life,” he says, “ when moral | "beauty see seems
more > urgent, more penetrating, than in-
tellectual beauty ; when all that the mind
has treasured must be bathed in the great-
ness of soul, lest it perish in the sandy
desert, forlorn as the river that seeks in
vain for the sea.” But for unnecessary
self-sacrifice, renouncement, abandonment
of earthly joys, and all such “ parasitic
virtues,” he has no commendation or
approval; feeling that man was created
to be happy, and that he is not wise who
voluntarily discards a happiness to-day for
fear lest it be taken from him on the
morrow. “ Let us wait till the hour of
sacrifice sounds —till then, each man to
his work. The hour will sound at last —
let us not waste our time in seeking it on
the dial of life.”

In this book, morality, conduct, life are
xi

'

|
Wisdom and Destiny

surveyed from every point of the compass,
but from an eminence always. Austerity
holds no place in his philosophy; he finds
room even “for the hours that babble
aloud in their wantonness.”” But all those
who follow him are led by smiling wisdom
to the heights where happiness sits en-
throned between goodness and love, where
virtue rewards itselfin the “silence that
is the walled garden of its happiness.”
It is strange to turn from this essay
to Serres Chaudes and La _ Princesse
Maleine, M. Maeterlinck’s earliest efforts
—the one a collection of vague images
woven into poetical form, charming,
dreamy, and almost meaningless; the
other a youthful and very remarkable
effort at imitation. In the plays that
followed the Princesse Maleine there was
the same curious, wandering sense of,
and search for, a vague and mystic

beauty :

+« That fair beauty which no eye can see,
Of that sweet music which no ear can measure.’?
xii
Introduction

In a little poem of his, Et si] revenait,
the last words of a dying girl, forsaken
by her lover, who is asked by her sister
what shall be told to the faithless one,
should he ever seek to know of her last
hours :
«Et s’il m’interroge encore

Sur Ja derniére heure ? —

Dites lui que j’ai souri

De peur qu’il ne pleure . . .

2”?

touch, perhaps, the very high-water mark
of exquisite simplicity and tenderness
blent with matchless beauty of expres-
sion. Pelléas et Mélisande was the cul-
minating point of this, his first, period
—a simple, pathetic love-story of boy
and girl —love that was pure and almost
passionless. It was followed by three
little plays ——‘“‘for marionettes,” he de-
scribes them on the title-page; among
them being La Mort de Tintagiles, the
play he himself prefers of all that he
has written. And then came a curious
change: he wrote <Aglavaine et Sely-

sette. The setting is familiar to us:
xiii
Wisdom and Destiny

the sea-shore, the ruined tower, the seat
by the well; no less than the old grand-
mother and little Yssaline. But Agla-
vaine herself is strange: this woman who
has lived and suffered; this queenly,
majestic creature, calmly conscious of her
beauty and her power; she whose over-
powering, overwhelming love is yet deli-
berate and thoughtful. The complexities
of real life are vaguely hinted at here:
instead of Golaud, the medieval, tyran-
nous husband, we have Selysette, the meek,
self-sacrificing wife; instead of the in-
stinctive, unconscious love of Pelléas and
Meéelisande, we have great burning passion.
But this play, too, was only a stepping-
stone —a link between the old method
and the new that is to follow. For there
will probably be no more plays like
Pelléas et Mélisande, or even like Agla-
vaine et Selysette. Real men and women,
real problems and disturbance of life —
it is these that absorb him now. His
next play will doubtless deal with a
psychology more actual, in an atmosphere

xiv
Introduction

less romantic; and the old familiar scene
of wood, and garden, and palace corridor
will be exchanged for the habitual abode
of men.

I have said it was real life that absorbed
him now, and yet am I aware that what
seems real to him must still appear vague
and visionary to many. It is, however,
only a question of shifting one’s point
of view, or, better still, of enlarging it.
Material success in life, fame, wealth —
these things M. Maeterlinck passes in-
differently by. There are certain ideals
that are dear to many on which he looks
with the vague wonder of a child. The
happiness of which he dreams is an inward
happiness, and within reach of successful
and unsuccessful alike. And so it may
well be that those content to buffet with
their fellows for what are looked on as
the prizes of this world, will still write
him down a mere visionary, and fail to
comprehend him. The materialist who
complacently defines the soul as the “in-

tellect plus the emotions,” will doubtless
xv
Wisdom and Destiny

turn away in disgust from M. Maeterlinck’s
constant references to it as the seat of
something mighty, mysterious, inexhaust-
ible in life. So, too, may the rigid
follower of positive religion, to whom
the Deity is a power concerned only with
the judgment, reward, and punishment of
men, protest at his saying that ‘God,
who must be at least as high as the
highest thoughts He has implanted in the
best of men, will withhold His smile
from those whose sole desire has been to
please Him; and they only who have
done good for sake of good, and as
though He existed not; they only who
have loved virtue more than they loved
God Himself, shall be allowed to stand
by His side.” But, after all, the genuine
seeker after truth knows that what seemed
true yesterday is to-day discovered to be
only a milestone on the road; and all
who value truth will be glad to listen to
a man who, differing from them perhaps,
yet tells them what seems true to him.

And whereas in the “Treasure of the
xvi
Introduction

Humble” he looked on life through a
veil of poetry and dream, here he stands
among his fellow-men, no longer trying
to “express the inexpressible,” but, in all
simplicity, to tell them what he sees.

“ Above all, let us never forget that
an act of goodness is in itself an act of
happiness. It is the flower of a long
inner life of joy and contentment; it
tells of peaceful hours and days on the
sunniest heights of our soul.” This
thought lies at the root of his whole
philosophy — goodness, happiness, love,
supporting each other, intertwined, re-
warding each other. “Let us not think
virtue will crumble, though God Him-
self seem-unjust. Where could the virtue
of man find more everlasting foundation
than in the seeming injustice of God?”
Strange that the man who has written
these words should have spent all his
school life at a Jesuit college, subjected
to its severe, semi-monastic discipline ;
compelled, at the end of his stay, to
go, with the rest of his fellows, through

xvii
Wisdom and Destiny

the customary period of “retreat,” last-
ing ten days, when the most eloquent
of the fathers would, one after the other,
deliver sermons terrific to boyish ima-
gination, sermons whose unvarying burden
was Hell and the wrath of God —to be
avoided only by becoming a Jesuit priest.
Out of ithe eighteen boys in the “ rhe-
torique” class, eleven eagerly embraced
this chance of escape from damnation.
As for M. Maeterlinck himself — fortu-
nately a day-boarder only — one can fancy
him wandering home at night, along the
canal banks, in the silence broken only
by the pealing of church bells, brooding
over these, mysteries . . . but how long
a road must the man have travelled who,
having been taught the God of Fra
Angelico, himself arrives at the concep-
tion of a “God who sits smiling on a
mountain, and to whom our gravest
offences are only as the naughtiness of
puppies playing on the hearth-rug.”
His environment, no less than his
schooling, helped to give a mystic tinge

xviii
Introduction

to his mind. The peasants who dwelt
around his father’s house always possessed
a peculiar fascination for him; he would
watch them as they sat by their door-
way, squatting on their heels, as their
custom is — grave, monotonous, motion-
less, the smoke from their pipes almost
the sole sign of life. For the Flemish
peasant is a strangely inert creature, his
work once done — as languid and lethargic
as the canal that. passes by his door.
There was one cottage into which the
boy would often peep on his way home
from school, the home of seven brothers
and one sister, all old, toothless, worn —
working together in the daytime at their
tiny farm; at night sitting in the gloomy
kitchen, lit by one smoky lamp —all
looking straight before them, saying not
a word; or when, at rare intervals, a
remark was made, taking it up each in
turn and solemnly repeating it, with per-
haps the slightest variation in form. It was
amidst influences such as these that his

boyhood was passed, almost isolated from
Wisdom and Destiny

the world, brooding over lives of saints
and mystics at the same time that he
studied, and delighted in, Shakespeare
and the Elizabethans, Goethe and Heine.
For his taste has been catholic always ;
he admires Meredith as he admires
Dickens, Hello and Pascal no less than
Schopenhauer. And it is this catholicity,
this open mind, this eager search for
truth, that have enabled him to emerge
from the mysticism that once enwrapped
him to the clearer daylight of actual ex-
istence; it is this faculty of admiring all
that is admirable in man and in life that
some day, perhaps, may take him very far.

It will surprise many who picture him
as a mere dreamy decadent, to be told
that he is a man of abiding and abundant
cheerfulness, who finds happiness in the
simplest of things. The scent of a flower,
the flight of sea-gulls around a cliff,
a cornfield in sunshine — these stir him
to strange delight. A deed of bravery,
nobility, or of simple devotion; a

mere brotherly act of kindness; the
xx
Introduction

unconscious sacrifice of the peasant who
toils all day to feed and ‘clothe his children
— these awake his warm and instant sym-
pathy. And with him, too, it is as with
De Quincey when he says, “ At no time
of my life have I been a person to hold
myself polluted by the touch or approach
of any creature that wore a human shape” ;
and more than one unhappy outcast, con-
demned by the stern law of man, has been
gladdened by his ready greeting and wel-
come. But, indeed, all this may be read
of in his book — I desired but to make it
clear that the book is truly a faithful mirror
of the man’s own thoughts, and feelings,
and actions. It is a book that many
will love —all those who suffer, for it
will lighten their suffering ; all those who
love, for it will teach them to love more
deeply. It is a book with its faults,
doubtless, as every book must be; but it
has been written straight from the heart,
and will go to the heart of many. . .

ALFRED SUTRO.
xxi
WISDOM AND DESTINY

§ 1.

N this book there will often be men-
tion of wisdom and destiny, of happi-
ness, justice, and love. There may seem
to be some measure of irony in thus
calling forth an intangible happiness
where so much real sorrow prevails ;
a justice that may well be ideal in the
bosom of an injustice, alas! only too
material; a love that eludes the grasp
in the midst of palpable hatred and
callousness. The moment may seem but
ill-chosen for leisurely search, in the
hidden recess of man’s heart, for motives

of peace and tranquillity ; occasions for
I I
Wisdom and Destiny

gladness, uplifting, and love; reasons
for wonder and gratitude— seeing that
the vast bulk of mankind, in whose
name we would fain lift our voice, have
not even the time or assurance to drain
to the dregs the misery and desolation of
life. Not to them is it given to linger over
the inward rejoicing, the profound conso-
lation, that the satisfied thinker has slowly
and painfully acquired, that he knows
how to prize. Thus has it often been
urged against moralists, among them
Epictetus, that they were apt to concern
themselves with none but the wise alone.
In this reproach is some truth, as some
truth there must be in every reproach
that is made. And indeed, if we had
only the courage to listen to the sim-
plest, the nearest, most pressing voice
of our conscience, and be deaf to all
else, it were doubtless our solitary

duty to relieve the suffering about us
2
Wisdom and Destiny

to the greatest extent in our power. |.
It were incumbent upon us to visit and
nurse the poor, to console the afflicted ; to
found model factories, surgeries, dispen-
saries, or at least to devote ourselves, as
men of science do, to wresting from nature
the material secrets which are most essen-
tial to man. But yet, were the world at
a given moment to contain only persons
thus actively engaged in helping each other,
and none venturesome enough to dare
snatch leisure for research in other direc-
tions, then could this charitable labour
not long endure; for all that is best in
the good that at this day is being done
round about us, was conceived in the
spirit of one of those who neglected,
it may be, many an urgent, immediate
duty in order to think, to commune with
themselves, in order to speak. Does it
follow that they did the best that was to
be done? To sucha question as this who
3
Wisdom and Destiny

shall dare to reply? The soul that is
meekly honest must ever consider the
simplest, the nearest duty to be the
best of all things it can do; but yet
were there cause for regret had all men
for all time restricted themselves to the
duty that lay nearest at hand. In each
generation some men have existed who
held in all loyalty that they fulfilled the
duties of the passing hour by pondering
on those of the hour to come. Most
thinkers will say that these men were
right. It is well that the thinker should
give his thoughts to the world, though
it must be admitted that wisdom befinds
itself sometimes in the reverse of the
sage’s pronouncement. This matters but
little, however; for, without such pro-
nouncement, the wisdom had not stood
revealed ; and the sage has accomplished

his duty.
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 2.

To-day misery is the disease of man-
kind, as disease is the misery of man. And
even as there are physicians for disease,
so should there be physicians for human
misery. But can the fact that disease is, un-
happily, only too prevalent, render it wrong
for us ever to speak of health? which
were indeed as though, in anatomy — the
physical science that has most in common
with morals— the teacher confined himself
exclusively to the study of the deformities
rhat greater or lesser degeneration will
nduce in the organs of man. We have.
surely the right to demand that his theo-,
ries be based on the healthy and vigorous
body ; as we have also the right to demand |
that the moralist, who fain would see
beyond the present hour, should take as |
his standard the soul that is happy, or,
that at least possesses every element of |

5
Wisdom and Destiny

happiness, save only the necessary con-
sciousness.

We live in the bosom of great injustice ;
but there can be, I imagine, neither cruelty
nor callousness in our speaking, at times,
as though this injustice had ended, else
should we never emerge from our circle. °

It is imperative that there should be
some who dare speak, and think, and act
as though all men were happy; for other-
wise, when the day comes for destiny to
throw open to all the people’s garden of
the promised land, what happiness shall
the others find there, what justice, what
beauty or love? It may be urged, it is
true, that it were best, first of all, to
consider the most pressing needs, yet is
this not always wisest; it is often of
better avail from the start to seek
that which is highest. When the waters
beleaguer the home of the peasant in

Holland, the sea or the neighbouring river
6
Wisdom and Destiny

having swept down the dyke that pro-
tected the country, most pressing is it
then for the peasant to safeguard his
cattle, his grain, his effects; but wisest
to fly to the top of the dyke, summoning
those who live with him, and from thence
meet the flood, and do battle. Humanity
up to this day has been like an invalid
tossing and turning on his couch in
vearch of repose; but therefore none the
‘ess have words of true consolation come
only from those who spoke as though
man were freed from all pain. For, as
ran was created for health, so was man-
kind created for happiness; and to speak
of its misery only, though that misery
be everywhere and seem everlasting, is
only to say words that fall lightly and
soon are forgotten. Why not speak as
though naankind were always on the eve
of great certitude, of great joy? Thither,
in truth, is man led by his instinct, though
7
Wisdom and Destiny

he never may live to behold the long-
wished-for to-morrow. It is well to be-
lieve that there needs but a little more
thought, a little more courage, more love,
more devotion to life, a little more eager-
ness, one day to fling open wide the portals
of joy and of truth. And this thing may
still come to pass. Let us hope that one
day all mankind will be happy and wise;
and though this day never should dawn,
to have hoped for it cannot be wrong.
And in any event, it is helpful to speak
of happiness to those who are sad, that
thus at least they may learn what it is that
happiness means. They are ever inclined
to regard it as something beyond them,
extraordinary, out of their reach. But if
all who may count themselves happy
were to tell, very simply, what it was
that brought happiness to them, the
others would see that between sorrow

and joy the difference is but as between
8
Wisdom and Destiny

a gladsome, enlightened acceptance of life
and a hostile, gloomy submission ; between
a large and harmonious conception of life,
and one that is stubborn and narrow. “Is
that all?” the unhappy would cry. “ But
we too have within us, then, the elements
of this happiness.” Surely you have
them within you! There lives not a
man but has them, those only excepted
upon whom great physical calamity has
fallen. But speak not lightly of this
happiness. There is no other. He is
the happiest man who best understands
his happiness; for he is of all men |
most fully aware that it is only the lofty
idea, the untiring, courageous, human
idea, that separates gladness from sorrow.
Of this idea it is helpful to speak, and
as often as may be; not with the view
of imposing our own idea upon others,
but in order that they who may listen
shall, little by little, conceive the desire
9
Wisdom and Destiny

to possess an idea of their own. For
in no two men is it the same. The
one that you cherish may well bring no
comfort to me; nor shall all your
eloquence touch the hidden springs of
my life. Needs must I acquire my
own, in myself, by myself; but you un-
consciously make this the easier for me,
by telling of the idea that is yours. It
may happen that I shall find solace in
that which brings sorrow to you, and
that which to you speaks of gladness
may be fraught with affliction for me.
But no matter; into my grief will enter
all that you saw of beauty and comfort,

_and into my joy there will pass all that
was great in your sadness, if indeed my

joy be on the same plane as your sadness.
It behoves us, the first thing of all, to
prepare in our soul a place of some lofti-
ness, where this idea may be lodged; as

the priests of ancient religions laid the
10
Wisdom and Destiny

mountain peak bare, and cleared it of
thorn and of root for the fire to descend
from heaven. ‘There may come to us any
day, from the depths of the planet Mars,
the infallible formula of happiness, con-
veyed in the final truth as to the aim and
the government of the universe. Such a
formula could only bring change or ad-
vancement unto our spiritual life in the
degree of the desire and expectation of
advancement in which we might long have
been living. The formula would be the
same for all men, yet would each one
bene fit only in the proportion of the eager-
ness, purity, unselfishness, knowledge, that
he had stored upinhis soul. All morality,
all study of justice and happiness, should
truly be no more than preparation, pro-
vision on the vastest scale—a way of gain-
ing experience, a stepping-stone laid down
for what is to follow. Surely, desirable

day of all days were the one when at
ar
Wisdom and Destiny

last we should live in absolute truth, in
immovable logical certitude; but in the
meantime it is given us to live in a truth
more important still, the truth of our
soul and our character; and some wise
men have proved that this life can
be lived in the midst of gravest material
errors.

§ 3.

Is it idle to speak of justice, happiness,
morals, and all things connected therewith,
before the hour of science has sounded —
that definitive hour, wherein all that we
cling to may crumble? The darkness
that hangs over our life will then, it
may be, pass away ; and much that we do
in the darkness shall be otherwise done in
the light. But nevertheless do the essen-
tial events of our moral and physical life

come to pass in the darkness as completely,
12
Wisdom and Destiny

_as inevitably, as they would in the light.
Our life must be lived while we wait for
the word that shall solve the enigma, and
the happier, the nobler our life, the more
vigorous shall it become; and we shall
have the more courage, clear-sightedness,
boldness, to seek and desire the truth.
And happen what may, the time can be
never ill-spent that we give to acquiring
some knowledge of self. Whatever our
relation may become to this world in which
we have being, in our soul there will yet
be more feelings, more passions, more
secrets unchanged and unchanging, than
there are stars that connect with the earth,
or mysteries fathomed by science. In the
bosom of truth undeniable, truth all ab-
sorbing, man shall doubtless soar upwards ;
but still, as he rises, still shall his soul un-
erringly guide him; and the grander the
truth of the universe, the more solace and
peace it may bring, the more shall the
13
Wisdom and Destiny

problems of justice, morality, happiness,
love, present to the eyes of all men the
semblance they ever have worn in the
eyes of the thinker.

We should live as though we were
always on the eve of the great revelation 3)
and we should be ready with welcome,
with warmest and keenest and fullest,
most heartfelt and intimate welcome.
And whatever the form it shall take on
the day that it comes to us, the best way
of all to prepare for its fitting reception is
to crave for it now, to desire it as lofty, as
perfect, as vast, as ennobling as the soul
can conceive. It must needs be more
beautiful, glorious, and ample than the
best of our hopes; for, where it differ
therefrom or even frustrate them, it must
of necessity bring something nobler, loftier,
nearer to the nature of man, for it will
bring us the truth. To man, though all
that he value go under, the intimate truth

14
Wisdom and Destiny

of the universe must be wholly, pre-
eminently admirable. And though, on
the day it unveils, our meekest desires
turn to ashes and float on the wind, still
shall there linger within us all we have
prepared; and the admirable will enter
our soul, the volume of its waters being
as the depth of the channel that our
expectation has fashioned.

§ 4.

Is it necessary that we should conceive
ourselves to be superior to the universe?
Our reason may prove what it will: our
reason is only a feeble ray that has issued
from Nature; a tiny atom of that whole
which Nature alone shall judge. Is it
fitting that the ray of light should desire
to alter the lamp whence it springs?

That loftiness within us, from whose
summit we venture to pass judgment on

15
Wisdom and Destiny

the totality of life, to absolve or condemn
it, is doubtless the merest pin-prick, visible
to our eye alone, on the illimitable sphere
of life. It is wise to think and to act
as though all that happened to man were
all that man most required. It is not long
ago—to cite only one of the problems
that the instinct of our planet is invited
to solve — that a scheme was on foot to
inquire of the thinkers of Europe whether
it should rightly be held as a gain or a
loss to mankind if an energetic, strenuous,
persistent race, which some, through pre-
judice doubtless, still regard as inferior to
the Aryan in qualities of heart and of soul
— if the Jews, in a word, were to vanish
from the face of the earth, or to acquire
preponderance there. I am satisfied that
the sage might answer, without laying
himself open to the charge of indifference
or undue resignation, “ In what comes to
pass will be happiness.” Many things
16
Wisdom and Destiny

happen that seem unjust to us; but of all
the achievements of reason there has been
none so helpful as the discovery of the
loftier reason that underlies the misdeeds
of nature. It is from the slow and gradual
vindication of the unknown force that we
deemed at first to be pitiless, that our
moral and physical life has derived its
chief prop and support. If a race dis-
appears that conforms with our every
ideal, it will be only because our ideal
still falls short of the grand ideal, which
is, as we have said, the intimate truth of
the universe.

Our own experience has taught us that
even in this world of reality there exist
dreams and desires, thoughts and feelings
of beauty, of justice, and love, that are of
the noblest and loftiest. And if there be
any that shrink from the test of reality
— in other words, from the mysterious,

nameless power of life—it follows that
2 7
Wisdom and Destiny

these must be different, but not that
their beauty is less, or their vastness, or
power to console. Till reality confront
us, it is well, it may be, to cherish ideals
that we hold to surpass it in beauty ;
but once face to face with reality, then
must the ideal flame that has fed on
our noblest desires be content to throw
faithful light on the less fragile, less
tender beauty of the mighty mass that
crushes these desires. Nor does this
seem to me to imply a mere drowsy
fatalism, or servile acquiescence, or op-
timism shrinking from action. The sage
no doubt must many a time forfeit
some measure of the blind, the head-
strong, fanatical zeal that has enabled
some men, whose reason was fettered
and bound, to achieve results that are
nigh superhuman; but therefore none
the less is it certain that no man of

upright soul should go forth in search
18
Wisdom and Destiny

of illusion or blindness, of zeal or vigour,
in a region inferior to that of his noblest
hours. To do our true duty in life, it
must ever be done with the aid of all
that is highest in our soul, highest in
the truth that is ours. And even though
it be permissible at times in actual, every-
day life to compromise with events, and
not follow impulse to the ruthless end —
as did St. Just, for instance, who in his
admirable and ardent desire for universal
peace, happiness, justice, in all good faith
sent thousands to the scaffold — in the life
of thought it is our unvarying duty to
pursue our thought right to the end.
Again, the knowledge that our actions
still await the seal of final truth can deter
from action those only who would have re-
mained no less inert had no such knowledge
been theirs. Thought that rises encourages
where it disheartens. And to those of

a loftier vision, prepared in advance to
10
Wisdom and Destiny

admire the truth that will nullify all they
have done, it seems only natural still to
endeavour with all might and main to
enhance what yet may be termed the
justice, the beauty, the reason of this our
earth. They know that to penetrate
deeper, to understand, to respect — all this
is enhancement. Above all, they have
faith in “ the idea of the universe.” They
are satisfied that every effort that tends
to improvement approaches the secret in-
tention of life; they are taught by the
failure of their noblest endeavours, by the
resistance of this mighty world, to dis-
cover anew fresh reasons for wonder, for
ardour, for hope.

As you climb up a mountain towards
nightfall, the trees and the houses, the
steeple, the fields and the orchards, the
road, and even the river, will gradually
dwindle and fade, and at last disappear

in the gloom that steals over the valley.
20
Wisdom and Destiny

But the threads of light that shine from
the houses of men and pierce through
the blackest of nights, these shine on
undimmed. And every step that you
take to the summit reveals but more
lights, and more, in the hamlets asleep at
your foot. For light, though so fragile,
is perhaps the one thing of all that yields
naught of itself as it faces immensity.
Thus it is with our moral light too, when
we look upon life from some slight ele-
vation. It is well that reflection should
teach us to disburden our soul of base
passions; but it should not discourage,
or weaken, our humblest desire for justice,
for truth, and for love.

Whence comes this rule that I thus
propound? Nay, I know not myself. To
me it seems helpful and requisite; nor
could I give reasons other than spring
from the feelings alone. Such reasons,

however, at times should by no means
2I
Wisdom and Destiny
be treated too lightly. If I should ever

attain a summit whence this law seemed
useless to me, I would listen to the secret
instinct bidding me not linger, but climb
on still higher, till its usefulness should
once again be clearly apparent to me.

§ 5.

This general introduction over, let us
speak more particularly of the influence
that wisdom can have upon destiny. And,
the occasion presenting itself here, I shall
do well perhaps to state now, at the very
beginning, that in this book it will be
vain to seek for any rigorous method.
For indeed it is but composed of oft-
interrupted thoughts, that entwine them-
selves with more or less system around two
or three subjects. Its object is not to
convince ; there is nothing it professes to

prove. Besides, in life books have by no
22
Wisdom and Destiny

means the importance that writers and
readers claim for them. We should re-
gard them as did a friend of mine, a
man of great wisdom, who listened one
day to the recital of the last moments of
the Emperor Antoninus Pius. Antoninus
Pius —who was perhaps truly the best
and most perfect man this world has
known, better even than Marcus Aurelius;
for in addition to the virtues, the kind-
ness, the deep feeling and wisdom of his
adopted son, he had something of greater
virility and energy, of simpler happiness,
something more real, spontaneous, closer
to everyday life— Antoninus Pius lay on
his bed, awaiting the summons of death,
his eyes dim with unbidden tears, his
limbs moist with the pale sweat of agony.
At that moment there entered the captain
of the guard, come to demand the watch-
word, such being the custom. £guanimi-
tas — evenness of mind, he replied, as he
23
Wisdom and Destiny

turned his head to the eternal shadow.
It is well that we should love and
admire that word, said my friend. But
better still, he added, to have it in us to
sacrifice, unknown to others, unknown
even to ourselves, the time  tortune
accords us wherein to admire it, in
favour of the first little useful, living
deed that the same fortune incessantly
offers to every willing heart.

§ 6.

“Tt was doubtless the will of their
destiny that men and events should
oppress them whithersoever they went,”
said an author of the heroes of his book.
Thus it is with the majority of men;
indeed, with all those who have not yet
learned to distinguish between exterior
and moral destiny. They are like a little
bewildered stream that I chanced to espy

24
Wisdom and Destiny

one evening as I stood on the hillside.
I beheld it far down in the valley, stagger-
ing, struggling, climbing, falling: blindly
groping its way to the great lake that
slumbered, the other side of the forest,
in the peace of the dawn. Here it was
a block of basalt that forced the streamlet
to wind round and about four times;
there, the roots of a hoary tree; further
on still, the mere recollection of an
obstacle now gone for ever thrust it
back to its source, bubbling in impotent
fury, divided for all time from its goal
and its gladness. But, in another direc-
tion, at right angles almost to the dis-
traught, unhappy, useless stream, a force
superior to the force of instinct had traced
a long, greenish canal, calm, peaceful, de-
liberate; that flowed steadily across the
country, across the crumbling stones,
across the obedient forest, on its clear
and unerring, unhurrying way from its
25
Wisdom and Destiny

distant source on the horizon to the same
tranquil, shining lake. And I had at my
feet before me the image of the two great
destinies offered to man.

§ 7.

Side by side with those whom men and
events oppress, there are others who have
within them some kind of inner force,
which has its will not only with men, but
even with the events that surround them.
Of this force they are fully aware, and
indeed it is nothing more than a know.
ledge of self that has far overstepped the
ordinary limits of consciousness.

Our consciousness is our home, our —
_tefuge from the caprice of fate, our
_centre of happiness s and strength. But —
” these things have been said so often that
we need do no more than refer to them,
and indicate them as our starting-point.

26

 
Wisdom and Destiny

Ennoblement comes to man in the degree
that his consciousness quickens, and the
nobler the man has become, the pro-
founder must consciousness be. Admir-
able exchange takes place here; and even
as love is insatiable in its craving for love,
so is consciousness insatiable in its craving
for growth, for moral uplifting ; and moral
uplifting for ever is yearning for con.
sciousness.

§ 8.

But this knowledge of self is only too
often regarded as implying no more than
a knowledge of our defects and our
qualities, whereas it does indeed extend
infinitely further, to mysteries vastly more
helpful. To know oneself in repose
suffices not, nor does it suffice to know
oneself in the past or the present. Those
within whom lies the force that I speak
of know themselves in the future too.

37
Wisdom and Destiny

Consciousness of self with the greatest of
men implies consciousness up to a point
of their star or their destiny. They are
aware of some part of their future, be-
cause they have already become part of
this future. They have faith in them-
selves, for they know in advance how
events will be received in their soul.
The event in itself is pure water that
flows from the pitcher of fate, and seldom
has it either savour or perfume or colour.
But even as the soul may be wherein it
seeks shelter, so will the event become
joyous or sad, become tender or hateful,
become deadly or quick with life. To
those round about us there happen in-
cessant and countless adventures, whereof
every one, it would seem, contains a germ
of heroism ; but the adventure passes away,
and heroic deed is there none. But when
Jesus Christ met the Samaritan, met a few

children, an adulterous woman, then did
28
Wisdom and Destiny

humanity rise three times in succession to

the level of God.

§ 9.

It might almost be said that there
happens to men only that they de-
sire. It is true that on certain external
events our influence is of the feeblest,
but we have all-powerful action on that
which these events shall become in our-
selves — in other words, on their spiritual
part, on what is radiant, undying within
them. There are thousands of men within
whom this spiritual part, that is craving
for birth in every misfortune, or love,
or chance meeting, has known not one
moment of life—these men pass away
like a straw on the stream. And others
there are within whom this immortal
part absorbs all; these are like islands
that have sprung up in the ocean; for

29
Wisdom aua Destiny

they have found immovable anchorage,
whence they issue commands that their
destiny needs must obey. The life of
most men will be saddened or lightened
by the thing that may chance to befall
them —in the men whom I speak of,
whatever may happen is lit up by their
inward life. When you love, it is not
your love that forms part of your destiny ;
but the knowledge of self that. you will
have found, deep down in your love —
this it is that will help to fashion your
life. If you have been deceived, it is not
the deception that matters, but the for-
giveness whereto it gave birth in your
soul, and the loftiness, wisdom, complete-
ness of this forgiveness — by these shall
your life be steered to destiny’s haven of
brightness and peace; by these shall your
eyes see more clearly than if all men
had ever been faithful. But if, by this
act of deceit, there have come not more
3°
Wisdom and Destiny

simpleness, loftier faith, wider range to
your love, then have you been deceived
in vain, and may truly say nothing has
happened.

§ 10.

Let us always remember that nothing
befalls us that is not of the nature of
ourselves. There comes no adventure but
wears to our soul the shape of our every-
day thoughts; and deeds of heroism are
but offered to those who, for many long
years, have been heroes in obscurity and
silence. And whether you climb up the
mountain or go down the hill to the
valley, whether you journey to the end
of the world or merely walk roung your
house, none but yourself shall you meet
on the highway of fate. If Judas go forth
to-night, it is towards Judas his steps
will tend, nor will chance for betrayal be

31
Wisdom and Destiny

lacking ; but let Socrates open his door, he
shall find Socrates asleep on the threshold
before him, and there will be occasion for
wisdom. Our adventures hover around
us like bees round the hive when prepar-
‘ing to swarm. They wait till the mother-
idea has at last come’ forth from our soul,
and no sooner has she appeared than they
‘all come rushing towards her. Be false,
‘and falsehoods will haste to you; love,
‘and adventures will flock to you, throb-
bing with love. They seem to be all on
\the watch for the signal we hoist from
within: and if the soul grow wiser towards
evening, the sorrow will grow wiser too
that the soul had fashioned for itself in
the morning.

§ 11.

No great inner event befalls those who
summon it not; and yet is there getm
of great inner event in the smallest

32
Wisdom and Destiny

occurrence of life. But events such as these
are apportioned by justice, and to each
man is given of the spoil in accord with
his merits.) We become that which we
discover in the sorrows and joys that befall
us; and the least expected caprices of fate
soon mould themselves on our thoughts.
It is in our past that destiny finds all her
weapons, her vestments, her jewels. Were
the only son of Thersites and Socrates
to die the same day, Socrates’ grief
would in no way resemble the grief of
Thersites. Misfortune or happiness, it
seems, must be chastened ere it knock at
the door of the sage; but only by stooping
low can it enter the commonplace soul.

§ 12.

As we become wiser we escape some
of our instinctive destinies. There is in
us all sufficient desire for wisdom to

3 33
Wisdom and Destiny

transform into consciousness most of the
hazards of life. And all that has thus
been transformed can belong no more to
the hostile powers. A sorrow your soul
has changed into sweetness, to indulgence
or patient smiles, is a sorrow that shall
never return without spiritual ornament ;
and a fault or defect you have looked in
the face can harm you no more, or even
be harmful to others.

Instinct and destiny are for ever confer-
ring together; they support one another,
and rove, hand in hand, round the man
who is not on his guard. And whoever
_is able to curb the blind force of instinct F
“within in him, is As able” to “curb the force of

external destiny also. He seems to create

some kind of sanctuary, whose inviolability

will be in the degree of his wisdom; and

the consciousness he has acquired becomes

the centre of a circle of light, within which

the passer-by is secure from the caprice
2
Wisdom and Destiny

of fate. Had Jesus Christ or Socrates
dwelt in Agamemnon’s palace among the
Atrides, then had there been no Oresteia;
nor would CEdipus ever have dreamed of
destroying his sight if they had been tran-
quilly seated on the threshold of Jocasta’s
abode. Fatality shrinks back abashed
from the soul that has more than once
conquered her; there are certain disasters
she dare not send forth when this soul is
near; and the sage, as he passes by, in-
tervenes in numberless tragedies.

§ 13.

The mere presence of the sage suffices
eT ee B
to paralyse destiny ; and c of ‘this we find _
“proof i in the fact that there exists _scarce a

“such is the case, the event needs must halt

before reaching bloodshed and tears. Not

only is there no drama wherein sage is in
35

~ drama wherein a true sage appears ; when
Wisdom and Destiny

conflict with sage, but indeed there are
very few whose action revolves round a
sage. And truly, can we imagine that an
event shall turn into tragedy between men
who have earnestly striven to gain know.
ledge of self? But the heroes of famous
tragedies do not question their souls pro-
foundly ; and it follows therefrom that the
beauty the tragic poet presents is only a
captive thing, is fettered with chains; for
were his heroes to soar to the height the
real hero would gain, their weapons would
fall to the ground, and the drama itself be-
come peace — the peace of enlightenment.
It is only in the Passion of Christ, the
Phedo, Prometheus, the murder of Or-
pheus, the sacrifice of Antigone — it is only
in these that we find the drama of the sage,
the solitary drama of wisdom. But else-
where it is rarely indeed that tragic poets
will allow a sage to appear on the scene,
though it be for an instant. They are
36
Wisdom and Destiny

afraid of a lofty soul ; for they know that
events are no less afraid, and that a
murder committed in the presence of the
sage seems quite other than the murder
committed in the presence of those whose
soul still knows not itself. Had CEdipus
possessed the inner refuge that Marcus
Aurelius, for instance, had been able to
erect in himself —a refuge whereto he
could fly at all times— had he only ac-
quired some few of the certitudes open to
every thinker — what could destiny then
have done? What would she have en-
trapped in her snares? Would they have
contained aught besides the pure light that
streams from the lofty soul, as it grows
more beautiful still in misfortune?

But where is the sage in CEdipus? Is
it Tiresias? He reads the future, but
knows not that goodness and forgiveness
are lords of the future. He knows the
truth of the gods, but not the truth of

37
Wisdum and Destiny

mankind. He ignores the wisdom that
takes misfortune to her arms and would fain
give it of her strength. Truly they who
know still know nothing if the strength
of lave be not theirs ; for the true sage is
not he who sees, but he who, seeing the
furthest, has the deepest love for mankind.
He who sees without loving is only strain-
ing his eyes in the darkness.

S a4.

We are told that the famous tragedies
show us the struggle of man against Fate.
I believe, on the contrary, that scarcely
a drama exists wherein fatality truly does
reign. Search as I may, I cannot find one
which exhibits the hero in conflict with
destiny pure and simple. For indeed it
is never destiny that he attacks; it is with
wisdom he is always at war. Real fatality
exists only in certain external disasters — as

33
Wisdom and Destiny

disease, accident, the sudden death of those
we love ; but inner fatality there is none.
Wisdom has will power sufficient to rec-
tify all that does not deal death to the
body; it will even at times invade the
narrow domain of external fatality. It is
true that we must have amassed con-
siderable and patient treasure within us
for this will power to find the resources
it needs.

§ 15.

The statue of destiny casts a huge
shadow over the valley, which it seems to
enshroud in gloom; but this shadow has
clearest outline for such as look down
from the mountain. We are born, it may
be, with the shadow upon us; but to many
men is it granted to emerge from beneath
it; and even though infirmity or weakness
keep us, till death, confined in these sombre
regions, still we can fly thence at times on

39
Wisdom and Destiny

the wings of our hopes and our thoughts.
There may well be some few over whom
Fate exerts a more tyrannous power, by
virtue of instinct, heredity and other laws
more relentless still, more profound and
obscure; but even when we writhe beneath
unmerited, crushing misfortune; even when
fortune compels us to do the thing we
should never have done, had our hands
been free ; even then, when the deed has
been done, the misfortune has happened,
it still rests with ourselves to deny her the
least influence on that which shall come
to pass in our soul. She may strike at
the heart that is eager for good, but still
is she helpless to keep back the light that
shall stream to this heart from the error
acknowledged, the pain undergone. It is
not in her power to prevent the soul from
transforming each single affliction into
thoughts, into feelings and treasure she
dare not profane. Be her empire never so
40
Wisdom and Destiny

great over all things external, she always
must halt when she finds on the threshold
a silent guardian of the inner life. And
if it be granted her then to pass through
to the hidden dwelling, it is but as a
bountiful guest she will enter, bringing
with her new pledges of peace: refreshing
the slumberous air, and making still clearer
the light, the tranquillity deeper — illumin-
ing all the horizon.

§ 16.

Let us ask once again: what had
destiny done if she had, by some blunder,
lured Epicurus, or Marcus Aurelius, or
Antoninus Pius into the snares that
she laid around CEdipus? I will even
assume that she might have compelled
Antoninus, for instance, to murder his
father, and, all unwittingly, to profane the
couch of his mother. Would that noble

41
Wisdom and Destiny

sovereign’s soul have been hopelessly
crushed? Would the end of it all not
have been as the end of all dramas must
be wherein the sage is attacked — great
sorrow surely, but also great radiance that
springs from this sorrow, and already
is partly triumphant over the shadow of
grief? Needs must Antoninus have wept
as all men must weep; but tears can quench
not one ray in the soul that shines with
no borrowed light. To the sage the road
is long that leads from grief to despair;
it is a road untravelled by wisdom. When
the soul has attained such loftiness as the
life of Antoninus shows us that his had
acquired, then is each falling tear illumined
by beautiful thought and by generous feel-
ing. He would have taken calamity to
him, to all that was purest, most vast,
in his soul; and misfortune, like water,
espouses the form of the vase that con-
tains it. Antoninus, we say, would have
42
Wisdom and Destiny

brought resignation to bear; but this is
a word that too often conceals the true
working of a noble heart. There is no
soul so petty but what it too may believe
that it is resigned. Alas! it is not re-
signation that comforts us, raises and
chastens; but indeed the thoughts and
the feelings in whose name we embrace
resignation; and it is here that wisdom
doles out the rewards they have earned to
her faithful.

Some ideas there are that lie beyond the
reach of any catastrophe. He will be far

 

less exposed to disaster who cherishes ideas _

“within him that soar high ‘above the i in-
“difference, selfishness, vanities of f everyday L
life. And “therefore, come happiness or

sorrow, the happiest man will be he within | |

whom the greatest idea shall burn the
most ardently. Had fate so desired it, '

Antoninus also, perhaps, had been guilty ,

of incest and parricide; but his inward —

43
Wisdom and Destiny

life would not have been crushed thereby,
as was that of C#dipus; nay, these very
catastrophes would have given him
mightier strength, and destiny would
have fled in despair, strewing the ground
by the emperor’s palace with her nets and
her blunted weapons ; for even as triumph
of dictators and consuls could be cele-
brated only in Rome, so can the true
triumph of Fate take place nowhere save _

’ in our soul.

—

§ 17.

Where do we find the fatality in “ Ham-
let,” “King Lear,” in “ Macbeth”? Is
its throne not erected in the very centre
of the old king’s madness, on the lowest
degree of the young prince’s imagination,
at the very summit of the Thane’s morbid
cravings? Macbeth we may well pass by ;
not need we linger over Cordelia’s father,

44
Wisdom and Destiny

for his absence of consciousness is all too
manifest; but Hamlet, Hamlet the thinker
—is he wise? Is the elevation sufficient
wherefrom he looks down on the crimes
of Elsinore? He seems to regard them
from the loftiest heights of his intellect ;
but in the light-clad mountain range of
wisdom there are other peaks that tower
far above the heights of the intellect —

“the peaks « of ¢ goodness and confidence, of

“indulgence and love. If he could have
surveyed the misdeeds of Elsinore from
the eminence whence Marcus Aurelius

or Fénelon, for instance, had surely sur-
veyed them, what would have resulted
then? And, first of all, does it not
often happen that a crime which is
suddenly conscious of the gaze of a
mightier soul will pause, and halt, and
at last crawl back to its lair; even as
bees cease from labour when a gleam of
sunshine steals into the hive ?
45
Wisdom and Destiny

The real destiny, the inner destiny,
would in any event have followed its
course in the souls of Claudius and
Gertrude; for these sinful ones had de-
livered themselves into its hands, as
must needs be the case with those whose
ways are evil; but would it have dared to
spread its influence abroad if one of those
sages had been in the palace? Would
it have dared to overstep the shining, de-
nouncing barrier that his presence would
have imposed, and maintained, in front
of the palace gates? When the sage’s
destiny blends with that of men of in-
ferior wisdom, the sage raises them to his
level, but himself will rarely descend.
Neither on earth nor in the domain of
fatality do rivers flow back to their
source. But to return: let us imagine
a sovereign, all-powerful soul— that of
Jesus, in Hamlet’s place at Elsinore ;
would the tragedy then have flown on till

46
wee

Wisdom and Destiny

it reached the four deaths at the end? Is
that conceivable? A crime may be never
so skilfully planned — when the eyes of
deep wisdom rest on it, it becomes like a
trivial show that we offer to very small
children at nightfall: some magic-lantern
performance, whose tawdry imposture a
last gleam of sunshine lays bare. Can you
conceive Jesus Christ—nay, any wise man
you have happened to meet — in the midst
of the unnatural gloom that overhung
Elsinore? Is not every action of Hamlet
induced by a fanatical impulse, which tells
him that duty consists in revenge alone?
and does it need superhuman effort to
recognise that revenge never can bea duty?
I say again that Hamlet thinks much, but
that he is by no means wise. He can-
not conceive where to look for the weak
spot in destiny’s armour. Lofty thoughts

suffice not always to overcome destiny ; for

eee ret AE

‘against th these destiny can oppose thoughts
47

oa
Wisdom and Destiny

that are loftier still; but what destiny has
ever withstood thoughts that are simple
and good, thoughts that are tender and
| loyal? We can triumph over destiny only
by doing the very reverse of the evil she
fain would have us commit. For no tragedy
can be inevitable. At Elsinore there is
not a soul but refuses to see, and hence
the catastrophe; but a soul that is quick
with life will compel those around it to
open their eyes. Where was it written
that Laertes, Ophelia, Hamlet, Claudius,
Gertrude, should die— where, save in
Hamlet’s pitiful blindness? But was this
blindness inevitable? Why speak of des-
tiny when a simple thought had sufficed
to arrest all the forces of murder? The
empire of destiny is surely sufficiently vast.
I acknowledge her might when a wall
crashes down on my head, when the storm
drives a ship on the rocks, when disease

attacks those whom I love; but into
48
Wisdom and Destiny

man’s soul she never will come, uncalled.
Hamlet is unhappy because he moves in
unnatural darkness ; and his ignorance puts
the seal upon his unhappiness. We have
but to issue commands and fate will obey
—there is nothing in the world that will
offer such long and patient submission.
Horatio, up to the last, could have issued
commands; but his master’s shadow lay on
him, and he lacked the courage to shake
himself free. Had there been but one soul
courageous enough to cry out the truth,
then had the history of Elsinore not been
shrouded in tears of hatred and horror.
But misfortune, that bends beneath the
fingers of wisdom like the cane that we
cut from the tree, becomes iron, and mur-
derously rigid, in the hand of unconscious-
ness. Once again, all depended here, not
on destiny, but on the wisdom of the
wisest, and this Hamlet was; .there-
fore did he, by his presence, become the
4 49.
Wisdom and Destiny

centre of the drama of Elsinore; and on
himself only did the wisdom of Hamlet
depend.

S £2.

And if you look distrustfully on ima-
ginary tragedies, you have only to in-
vestigate some of the greatest dramas of
authentic history to find that in these too
the destinies of men are no different : that
their ways are the same, and their petulance,
their revolt and submission. You will
discover that there too it is a force of
man’s own creating that plays the most _
“active: part” in what it pleases us to term
< fatality.” _This fatality, it is true, is
“enormous, but rarely irresistible. It does
not leap forth at a given moment from
an inexorable, inaccessible, unfathomable
abyss. It is built up of the energy, the
desires and suffering, the thoughts and

assions of our brothers: and_ these
5°
Wisdom and Destiny

passions should be well known to us,
for they differ not from our own. In
our most inexplicable moments, in our
most mysterious, unexpected misfortunes,
we rarely find ourselves struggling with
an invisible enemy, or one that is entirely
foreign to us. Why strive of our own
free will to enlarge the domain of the
inevitable? They who are truly strong
are aware that among the forces that
oppose their schemes there are some that
they know not; but against such as they
do know they fight on as bravely as though |
no others existed ; and these men will be
often victorious. We shall have added’
most strangely to our safety and happiness |
and peace t the day that our sloth and our |

Asters, acannon oe

 

_ ignorance . shall have ceased to term fatal,

“what should truly be looked on as s human —
~ and natural by our intelligence and our

“energy.

5r
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 19.

Let us consider one noteworthy victim
of destiny, Louis XVI. Never, it would
seem, did relentless fatality clamour so
loudly for the destruction of an unfor-
tunate man; of one who was gentle, and
good, and virtuous, and honourable. And
yet, as we look more closely into the pages
of history, do we not find that fatality
distils her poison from the victim’s
own wavering feebleness, his own trivial
duplicity, blindness, unreason, and vanity?
And if it be true that some kind of
predestination governs every circumstance
of life, it appears to be no less true that
such predestination exists in our character
only ; and to modify character must surely
be easy to the man of unfettered will, for
is it not constantly changing in the lives
of the vast bulk of men? Is your own

52
Wisdom and Destiny

character, at thirty, the same as it was
when you were ten years younger? It
will be better or worse in the measure
that you have believed that disloyalty,
wickedness, hatred and falsehood have
triumphed in life, or goodness, and truth,
and love. And you will have thought that
you witnessed the triumph of hatred or
love, of truth or of falsehood, in exact
accord with the lofty or baser idea as to
the happiness and aim of your life that
will slowly have arisen within you. F _For_
_it is our _most_secret desire that governs |
and | dominates all. If your eyes look for.

mrenapen

“nothing” ‘but en evil, you will always see evil

~ triumphant 5 but if you ta have learned to:

mere

let your glance rest on sincerity, simple-
ness, truth, you will ever discover, deep |
down in all things, the silent overpowering

victory of that which you love. |

i

53
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 20.

It is scarcely from this point of view,
however, that Louis XVI. should be
judged. Let us rather imagine ourselves
in his place, in the midst of his doubt and
bewilderment, his darkness and difficulties.
Now that we know all that happened it is
easy enough to declare what should have
been done; but are we ourselves, at this
moment, aware of what is our duty? Are
we not contending with troubles and
doubts of our own? and were it not well
that they who one day shall pass judgment
upon us should seek out the track that
our footsteps have left on the sands of
the hillock we climbed, hoping thence
to discover the future? Louis XVI. was
bewildered: do we know what ought to
be done? Do we know what we best had
abandon, what we best had defend? Are
we wiser than he as we waver betwixt the

54
Wisdom and Destiny

rights of human reason and those that cir-
cumstance claims? And when hesitation
is conscientious, does it not often possess
all the elements of duty? There is one}
most important lesson to be learned from}
the example of this unfortunate king: |
and it is that when doubt confronts us |
“which in itself is “noble and great, it is
our duty to march bravely onwards, turn-
al ing “neither to “right nor to left of us,
“going infinitely further” ‘than seems to be
‘réasonable, practical, just. The idea that
~we hold to-day of duty, and justice, and |
truth, may seem clear to us now, and ad- ‘
vanced and unfettered; but how different |
will it appear a few years, a few centuries
later! Had Louis XVI. done what we
should have done—we who now are aware
of what had been the right thing to do —
had he frankly renounced all the follies
of royal prerogative, and loyally adopted
the new truth and loftier justice that had
55

Me
Wisdom and Destiny

sprung into being, then should we to-day
be admiring his genius. And the king
himself, perhaps — for he was not a foolish
man, or wicked — may have for one in-
stant beheld his own situation with the
clear eye of an impartial philosopher.
That at least is by no means impossible,
historically or psychologically. Even in
our most solemn hours of doubt it is rare
that we know not where we should look
for the fixed point of duty, its unalterable
summit; but we feel that there stretches
a distance too wide to be travelled be-
tween the actual thing to be done and
this mountain-peak, that glitters afar in
its solitude. And yet it is proved by
man’s whole history — by the life of each
one of us—that it is on the loftiest
summit that right has always its dwell-
ing; and that to this summit we too
at the end must climb, after much pre-

cious time has been lost on many an
56
Wisdom and Destiny

sage, a great man, a hero, if not one who
has dared to go, alone and ahead of the | a ;
others, to the deserted table-land that lay
more or less within sight of all men?

intermediate eminence. And what is a |
}

§ 21.

We do not imply that Louis XVI.
should necessarily have been a man of this
stamp, a man of genius; although to have
genius seems almost the duty of him who
sways in his hands the destiny of vast
numbers of men. Nor do we claim that
the best men among us to-day would have
been able to escape his errors, or the
misfortunes to which they gave rise. And
yet there is one thing certain: that of __

all these misfortunes | none had_ super-

human origin ; not one was supernaturally,
ess
or too “mysteriously, inevitable. They ae

Ane eesti EI

57

““came not from another world; they were
Se ee Pies

oe
Wisdom and Destiny

launched by no monstrous god, capricious
and incomprehensible. They were born
of an idea of justice that men failed to
grasp; an idea of justice that suddenly
had wakened in life, but never had lain
asleep in the reason of man. And is
there a thing in this world can be more
reassuring, or nearer to us, more pro-
foundly human, than an idea of justice?
Louis XVI. may well have regretted that
this idea, that shattered his peace, should
have awakened during his reign; but this
was the only reproach he could level at
fate; and when we murmur at fate our-
selves our complaints have much the
same value. For the rest, it is legitimate
enough to suppose that there needed but
one single act of energy, absolute loyalty,
disinterested, clear-sighted wisdom, to
change the whole course of events. If
the flight to Varennes— in itself an act
of duplicity and culpable weakness — had
58
Wisdom and Destiny

only been arranged a little less childishly,
foolishly (as any man would have arranged
it who was accustomed to the habits of
life), there can be not a doubt that Louis
XVI. would never have died on the scaffold.
Was it a god, or his blind reliance on
Marie Antoinette, that led him to entrust
de Fersen —a stupid, conceited, and tact-
less creature — with the prepara'ions and
control of this disastrous journey? Was
it a force instinct with great mystery, or
only his own unconsciousness, heedlessness,
thoughtlessness, and a kind of strange
apathetic submission — such as the weak
and the idle will often display at mo-
ments of danger, when they seem almost
to challenge their star—that induced
him again and again, at each change of
horses, to put his head out of the carriage
window, and thus be recognised three or
four times? And at the moment that
decided all, in that throbbing and sinister
59
Wisdom and Destiny

night of Varennes —a night indeed when
fatality should have been an immovable
mountain governing all the horizon — do
we not see this fatality stumbling at every
step, like a child that is learning to walk
and wonders is it this white pebble or
that tuft of grass that will cause it to fall
to right or to left of the path? And then,
at the tragic halt of the carriage, in that
black night: at the terrible cry sent forth
by young Drouet, “In the name of the
Nation!” there had needed but one order
from the king, one lash of the whip, one
pull at the collar —and you and I would
probably not have been born, for the
history of the world had been different.
And again, in presence of the mayor, who
stood there, respectful, disconcerted, hesi-
tating, ready to fling every gate open had
but one imperious word been spoken;
and at the shop of M. Sauce, the worthy

village grocer; and, last of all, when
60
Wisdom and Destiny
Goguelat and de Choiseul had arrived

with their hussars, bringing rescue, salva-
tion — did not all depend, a hundred times
over, ona mere yes or no, a step, a gesture,
a look? Take any ten men with whom
you are intimate, let them have been King
of France, you can foretell the issue of
their ten nights. Ah, it was that night
truly that heaped shame on fatality, ‘that
aid bare her weakness! For that night
revealed to all men the dependence, the
-wretched and shivering poverty of the
great mysterious force that, in moments
of undue resignation, seems to weigh so
heavily on life! Never before has she
been beheld so completely despoiled of
her vestments, of her imposing, deceptive
robes, as she incessantly came and went
that night, from death to life, from life
to death; throwing herself at last, like a
woman distraught, into the arms or a..

unhappy king, whom she besought till
61
Wisdom and Destiny

dawn for a decision, an existence, that
she herself never can find save only in
the depths of the will and the intellect
of man.

§ 22.

And yet this is not theentiretruth. It
is helpful to regard events in this fashion,
, thus seeking to minimise the importance _

 

‘of fatality, looking upon it as some vague
"and wandering creature that we have to
‘shelter and guide. We gain the more
courage thereby, the more confidence,

ieee

re initiative ; ; and these are qualities essential
- to the doing of anything useful; and
they ‘shall stand us in good stead, too,
when our own hour of danger draws
nigh. But for all that, we do not pre-
tend that there truly is no other force—
that all things can be governed by our
will and our intellect. These must be

trained to act like the soldiers of a
62
Wisdom and Destiny

conquering army; they must learn to
thrive at the cost of all that opposes
them ; they must find sustenance even in
the unknown that towers above them.
Those who desire to emerge from the
ordinary habits of life, from the straitened
happiness of mere pleasure-seeking men,
must march with deliberate conviction
along the path that is known to them,
yet never forget the unexplored regions
through which this path winds. We_
must act as though we were masters —

picrew 6

as though all things: were bound to

ets

“obey us; and yet let us carefully tend in ~

Prt eee

“our “soul ¢ a thought whose duty it shall ‘be

wes Prt

‘to offer noble submission to the mighty

forces we may encounter. It is well that
‘the hand should believe that all is ex-
pected, foreseen; but well, too, that we
should have in us a secret idea, inviolable,
incorruptible, that it will always remember

ene’

_ that whatever is great most ¢ often must
artnet + 63 7 %

My
Wisdom and Destiny

| be unforeseen, It is the unforeseen, the
“unknown, that fulfil what we never should
dare to attempt; but they will not come
, to our aid if they find not, deep down in

L (our heart, an altar inscribed to their

“worship. Men of the mightiest will —
\men like Napoleon — were careful, in their

most extraordinary deeds, ‘to “leave open 7

a good share to ‘fate. Those within whom
“there lives not a generous hope will keep
fate closely confined, as they would a
sickly child; but others invite her into
the limitless plains man has not yet the
strength to explore, and their eyes follow
her every movement.

§ 23.

These feverish hours of history resemble
2 storm that we see on the ocean; we
come from far inland: we rush to the

beach, in keen expectation; we eye the
€4
Wisdom and Destiny

enormous waves with curious eagerness,
with almost childish intensity. And there
comes one along that is three times as high
and as fierce as the rest. It rushes towards
us like some monster with diaphanous
muscles. It uncoils itself in mad haste
from the distant horizon, as though it
were bearer of some urgent, complete re-
velation. It ploughs in its wake a track so
deep that we feel that the sea must at last
be yielding up one of her secrets ; but all
things happen the same as on a breathless
and cloudless day, when languid wavelets
roll to and fro in the limpid, fathomless
water; from the ocean arises no living
thing, not a blade of grass, not a stone.
If aught could discourage the sage
—though he is not truly wise whose
astonishment is not enlightened, and his
interest quickened, by the unforeseen
thing that discourages —it would be the
discovery, in this French Revolution, of
5 65 ’
Wisdom and Destiny

more than one destiny that is infinitely
sadder, more overwhelming, more inex-
plicable, than that of Louis XVI. I refer
to the Girondins: above all, to the admir-
able Vergniaud. To-day even, though we
know all that the future kept hidden
from him, and are able to divine what it
was that was sought by the instinctive
desire of that exceptional century — to-day
even it were surely not possible to act
‘more nobly, more wisely, than he. Let
‘fortune hurl any man into the burning
centre of a movement that had swept
every barrier down, it were surely not
‘possible to reveal a finer character or
‘loftier spirit. Could we fashion, deep
‘down in our heart, out of all that is
‘purest within us, out of all our wisdom
and all our love, some beautiful, spotless
creature with never a thought of self,
without weakness or error — such a being

would desire a place by the side of
66
Wisdom and Destiny

Vergniaud, on those deserted Convention
seats, “whereon the shadow of death
seemed already to hover,” that he might
think as Vergniaud thought, and so speak,
and act. He saw the infallible, eternal,
that lay the other side of that tragical
moment; he knew how to be humane
and benevolent still, through all those
terrible days when humanity and benevo-
lence seemed the bitterest enemies of the
ideal of justice, whereto he had sacrificed
all; and in his great and noble doubt he
marched bravely onwards, turning neither
to right nor to left of him, going infinitely
further than seemed to be reasonable, practi-
cal, just. The violent death that was not
unexpected came towards him, with half his
“road yet untravelled ; to teach us that c often ;

eee MMSE Bia

“in this strange conflict between man and his”

org ane

at ‘destiny, the question is not how to s: save

~ the life of our body, but that of our most __

~~ beaatifal feelings, | of ¢ our loftiest thoughts
67
prea >

Wisdom, and Destiny

“ Of what avail are my loftiest thoughts
if I have ceased to exist?” there are some
will ask ; to whom others, it may be, will
answer, “ What becomes of myself if all
that I love i in my | heart and my spirit must

aT

 

_ die, that 1 my life may be. ‘be saved?” And

are not almost all the morals, and heroism,

and virtue of man summed up in that —

~_single choice? ?

§ 24.

But what may this wisdom be that we
rate thus highly? Let us not seek to
define it too closely; that were but to
enchain it. If a man were desirous to
study the nature of light, and began by
extinguishing all the lights that were near,
would not a few cinders, a smouldering
wick, be all he would ever discover? And
so has it been with those who essayed
definition. “ The word wise,” said Joubert,
“when used to a child, is a word that each
child understands, and that we need never

68 ;
Wisdom and Destiny

explain.” Let us accept it even as the
child accepts it, that it may grow with
our growth. Let us say of wisdom v what

Sister Hadewijck, the mysterious enemy of
Ruijsbroeck the Admirable, said of love :
“ Its ts profoundest abyss is its most beauti-__
ful “form.” ”” Wisdom requires no form ;_ ;
~ her beauty must vary, as varies the beauty
of flame. She is no motionless goddess,
for ever couched on her throne. She is
Minerva who follows us, soars to the
skies with us, falls to the earth with us,
mingles her tears with our tears, and
rejoices when we rejoice. Truly wise you
are not unless your v wisdom be constantly
~ changing ‘from your “childhood on to your
~ death. ‘The more the word means to you,
the more beauty and depth it conveys, the
wiser must you become; and each step
that one takes towards wisdom reveals to
the soul ever-widening space, that wisdom
never shall traverse.
69
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 25.

He who knows himself is wise ; yet have
we no sooner acquired real consciousness
of our being than we learn that true
wisdom is a thing that lies far deeper
than consciousness. The chief gain of
increased consciousness is that it unveils
an ever-loftier unconsciousness, on whose
heights do the sources lie of the purest
wisdom. The heritage of unconsciousness
is for all men the same; but it is situate
partly within and partly without the con-
fines of normal consciousness. _The bulk

of mankind will rarely pass “over the
border ; but true lovers of wisdom press

on till they open new routes that cross

over the frontier. If I love, and my love’

“has procured me the fullest consciousness
man may attain, then will an unconscious-
ness light up this love that shall be quite
other than the one whereby commonplace

zo
Wisdom and Destiny

love is obscured. For this second un-
consciousness hedges the animal round,
whereas the first draws close unto God;
but needs must it lose all trace of the
second ere it become aware of itself. In
unconsciousness we ever must dwell; but
are able to purify, day after day, the
unconsciousness that wraps us around.

§ 26.

We shall not become wise through
worshipping reason alone; and wisdom
means more than perpetual triumph of
reason over inferior instincts. Such
triumphs can help us but little if our
reason be not taught thereby to offer
profoundest submission to another and
different instinct — that ‘of the soul. ~
icc a Seed
These triumphs are_ "precious, _becausé—
semper besetemsnnanr
aS reveal the presence of diviner in-

Fe amare Tipe na rT Serene rete Brana

= stinct, that grows ever diviner still. _And

ee On TO eae aI
Wisdom and Destiny

their aim is not in themselves ; they serve
but to clear the way for the destiny of
the soul, which is a destiny, always, of
ppunheation and light.

\
§ 27.

Reason flings open the door to wisdom ;
but the most living wisdom befinds itself
not in reason. Reason bars the gate to
malevolent destiny ; but wisdom, away on
the horizon, throws open another gate to

| propitious destiny. Reason defends and
withdraws ; forbids, rejects, and destroys,

creases, creates, and commands. Reason

produces not wisdom, which is rather a

| craving of soul. It dwells up above, far

higher than reason ; and thus is it of the

‘nature of veritable wisdom to do count-

| less things whereof reason disapproves, or

‘shall but approve hereafter. So was it
72

ee

Wisdom advances, attacks, and adds; in- _
Wisdom and Destiny

that wisdom one aay said to reason, It

“were well to love one’s enemies and return _

_ good for evil. Reason, that day, tiptoe
on the loftiest peak in its kingdom, at
last was fain to agree. But wisdom is |
not yet content, and seeks ever further, |
alone.

§ 28.

If wisdom obeyed reason only, and
sought nothing more than to overcome
instinct, then would wisdom be ever the
same. There would be but one wisdom
for all, and its whole range would be
known to man, for reason has more than
once explored its entire domain.

Certain fixed points there well may be
that are common to all classes of wisdom ;
but there exists none the less the widest
possible difference between the atmospheres
that enwrapped the wisdom of Jesus Christ
and of Socrates, of Aristides and Marcus
Aurelius, of Fénelon and Jean Paul. Let

73
Wisdom and Destiny

the same event befall these men on the
self-same day : if it fall into the running
waters of their wisdom, it will undergo
complete transformation, becoming dif-
ferent in every one; if it fall into the
stagnant water of their reason, it will
remain as it was, unchanged. If Jesus
Christ and Socrates both were to meet the
adulterous woman, the words that their
reason would prompt them to speak would
vary but little; but belonging to different
worlds would be the working of the wis-
dom within them, far beyond words and
far beyond thoughts. For differences such
as these are of the very essence of wisdom.
There is but one starting-point for the
wise — the threshold of reason. But they
separate one from the other as soon as
the triumphs of reason are well under-
stood; in other words, as soon as they
enter freely the domain of the higher
| unconsciousness. ( Ghig Gencec (see? re

74
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 29.

To say “this is reasonable” is by no
means the same as to say “this is wise.”
The thing that is reasonable is not of
necessity wise, and a thing may be very
wise and yet be condemned by over-ex-
acting “reason. It is from reason that
justice springs, but goodness is born of
wisdom; and goodness, we are told by.
Plutarch, “ extends ‘much | further than i:
justice.” Is it to reason or wisdom that
heroism ‘should be ascribed? Wisdom,
perhaps, is only the sense of the infinite
applied to our moral life. Reason, it is
true, has the sense of the infinite also,
but dare not do more than accord it bare
recognition. It would seem opposed to
the very instinct of reason to regard the
sense of the infinite as being of importance
in life; but wisdom is wise in the measure

75
Wisdom and Destiny

that the infinite governs all she procures
to be done.
In reason no love can be found — there
is much love in wisdom ; and all that is
_highest in wisdom entwines “around all |
that is purest in love. Love is the form
\ most divine of the infinite, and also, be-
| cause most divine, the form most pro-

foundly human. Why should we not say
| that wisdom is the triumph of reason

¥
.

\ divine over reason of man?

§ 30.

We cannot cultivate reason too fully,
but by wisdom only should reason be
guided. The man is not wise whose
reason has not yet been taught to obey
the first signal of love. What would
Christ, all the heroes, have done had their
reason not learned to submit? Is each
deed of the hero not_ always outside

Seat re sta An,

ie Rianne er y "6
Wisdom and Destiny

the boundary of reason? and yet, who
“would venture to say ‘that the hero is
not wiser by far than the sluggard who
quits not his chair because reason forbids
him to rise? Let us say it once more—
the vase wherein we. should ‘tend the true a
wisdom is love, and not reason. Reason
is found, it is true, at the root-springs
of wisdom, yet is wisdom not reason’s
flower. For we speak not of logical) ~
wisdom here, but of wisdom quite other, |
the favourite sister of love. 4
Reason and love battle fiercely at first /
in the soul that begins to expand; but |
wisdom is born of the peace that at last |

 

ieee

"s

comes to pass between reason and love;
and the peace becomes the profounder
as reason yields up still more of her rights

to love.
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 31.

Wisdom is the lamp of love, and love is
the oil of the lamp. Love, sinking deeper,
grows wiser ; and wisdom that springs up
aloft comes ever the nearer to love. If
you love, you must needs become wise ; be
wise, and you surely shall love. Nor can
any one love with the veritable love but
his love must make him the better; and
to grow better is but to grow wiser.
There is not a man in the world but
something improves in his soul from the
moment he loves— and that though his
love be but vulgar; and those in whom
love never dies must needs continue to
love as their soul grows nobler and nobler.
Love is the food of wisdom ; wisdom the
_ food | ‘of love; 3a ‘circle ‘of light within
~ which those who love ‘clasp the hands of
those who are wise. _Wisdom and. love are
one ; andin Swedenborg” s Paradise the wife

“is © the love of the wisdom. of the wise.”
8

mom

wee
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 32.

«Our reason,” said Fénelon, “is de-
tived from the clearness of our ideas.”
But our wisdom, we might add — in other
words, all that is best in our soul and our |
character, is to be found above all in those

a ideas that are not yet clear. Were we to j

‘allow our clear ideas only to govern our
life, we should quickly become undeserving
of either much loveor esteem. For, truly,
what could be less clear than the reasons
that bid us be generous, upright, and just ;
that teach us to cherish in all things the
noblest of feelings and thoughts? But it
happily so comes to pass that the more
clear ideas we possess, the more do we
learn to respect those that as yet are still
vague. We must strive without ceasing —

Pings enw hep a se etatensont

to clarify as many y ideas as we can, that we

“may “thus arouse in our soul _more and

ee 79

irene
Wisdom and Destiny

more that now are obscure. The clear
ideas may at times seem to govern our
external life, but the others perforce must
march on at the head of our intimate life,
and the life that we see invariably ends by
obeying the invisible life. On the quality,
number, and power of our clear ideas do
the quality, number, and power depend of

those that are vague; and hidden away in __

“the midst of these vague ones, patiently _

biding their hour, there may well lurk _

“most of the definite truths that we seek _
with such ardour. Let us not keep them

waiting too long; and indeed, a beautiful
crystal idea we awaken within us shall not
fail, in its turn, to arouse a beautiful vague
idea; which last, growing old, and having
itself become clear (for is not perfect clear-

jness most often the sign of decrepitude in

oe idea ?), shall also go forth, and disturb
|from its slumber another obscure idea, but

Joftier, lovelier far than it had been itself
80
Wisdom and Destiny

in its sleep; and thus, it may be, treading
gently, one after the other, and never dis-
heartened, in the midst of those silent ranks
— some day, by mere chance, a small hand,
scarce visible yet, shall touch a great truth.

§ 33-

Clear ideas and obscure ideas; heart,
intellect, will, and reason, and soul — truly
these words that we use do but mean more
or less the same thing: the spiritual riches
of man. The soul may well be no more
than the most beautiful desire of our brain,
and God Himself be only the most beau-
tiful desire of our soul. So great is the
darkness here that we can but seek to
divide it; and the lines that we trace must
be blacker still than the sections they
traverse. Of all the ideals that are left to
us, there is perhaps only one that we still

can accept; and that one is to gain full
6 81
Wisdom and Destiny
self-knowledge; but to how great an extent
does this knowledge truly depend on our
reason — this knowledge that at first would
appear to depend on our reason alone?
Surely he who at last had succeeded in
realising, to the fullest extent, the place
that he filled in the universe — surely he
should be better than others, be wiser and
truer, more upright; in a word, be more
moral? But can any man claim, in good
faith, to have grasped this relation; and
do not the roots of the most positive
morals lie hidden beneath some kind of
mystic unconsciousness? Our most beau-
tiful thought does no more than pass
through our intelligence ; and none would
imagine that the harvest must have been
reaped in the road because it is seen pass-
ing by. When reason, however precise, sets
forth to explore her domain, every step that
she takes is over the border. And yet is it

the intellect that lends the first touches of
82
Wisdom and Destiny

beauty to thought; the rest lies not wholly
with us; but this rest will not stir into
motion until intellect touches the spring.
Reason, the well-beloved daughter of in-

*"tellect, must go take her stand on the
threshold of our spiritual life, having first
flung open the gates of the prison beneath,
where the living, instinctive forces of being _

“Tie captive, asleep. She must wait, with

"the lamp in her hand; and her presence
alone shall suffice to ward off from the
threshold all that does not yet conform
with the nature of light. Beyond, in the |
_Tegions | unlit by her rays, obscure life con-
_~tinues. This troubles her not; indeed,
~ she is ‘glad. . . . She knows that,
in the eyes of the God she desires:
all that has not yet crossed her arcade
of light—be it dream, be it thought,
even act—can add nothing to, can take ~~ <
nothing from, the ideal creature she’
is craving to mould. She watches the |

83
Wisdom and Destiny

flame of her lamp; needs must it
burn brightly, and remain at its post,
and be seen from afar. She listens,
untroubled, to the murmur of inferior
instincts out there in the darkness. But
the prisoners slowly awake; there are
some who draw nigh to the threshold,
and their radiance is greater than hers.
There flows from them a light less
material, softer and purer than that of
the bold, hard flame which her hand pro-
tects. They are the inscrutable powers
of goodness and love; and others follow
behind, more mysterious still, and more
infinite, seeking admission. What shall
she do? If, at the time that she took her
stand there on the threshold, she had
still lacked the courage to learn that she
could not exist alone, then will she be
troubled, afraid; she will make fast the
gates; and should these be ever re-
opened, she would find only quivering
84
Wisdom and Destiny

cinders at the foot of the gloomy stairs.
But if her strength be unshaken; if from
all that she could not learn she has
learned, at least, that in light there can
never be danger, and that reason itself
may be freely staked where greater bright-
ness prevails — then shall ineffable changes
take place on the threshold, from lamp
unto lamp. Drops of an unknown oil
will blend with the oil of the wisdom
of man; and when the white strangers
have passed, the flame of her lamp shall
rise higher, transformed for all time; shall
shed purer and mightier radiance amidst
the columns of the loftier doorway.

§ 34.

So much for isolated wisdom; now
let us return to the wisdom that moves
to the grave in the midst of the mighty
crowd of human destinies; for the

85
Wisdom and Destiny

destiny of the sage holds not aloof from
that of the wicked and frivolous. All
destinies are for ever commingling; and
the adventure is rare in whose web the
hempen thread blends not with the
golden. There are misfortunes more
gradual, less frightful of aspect, than
those that befell CEdipus and the prince
of Elsinore; misfortunes that quail not
beneath the gaze of truth or justice or
love. Those who speak of the profit of
wisdom are never so wise as when they
freely admit, without pride or heart-
burning, that wisdom grants scarcely a
boon to her ‘faithful that the foolish or
"wicked would prize. And indeed, it ASS
often take place that the sage, as he moves|
-among men, shall pass almost unnoticed, |
shall affect them but slightly ; be this that |
his stay is too brief, that he comes too
‘late, that he misses true contact; or per-

\ .
.chance that he has to contend with forces
; 86
Wisdom and Destiny

) too overwhelming, amassed by myriad men |
_ from time immemorial. ‘No miracles can |
Whe “perform on material things; he can
save only that which life’s ordinary laws
still allow to be saved; and himself, it
may be, shall be suddenly seized in a great
inexorable whirlwind. But, though he
perish therein, still does he escape the fate
that is common to most; for at least he
will die without having been forced — for
weeks, or it may be for years, before the
catastrophe —to be the helpless, despairing
witness of the ruin of his soul. And to
save some one —if we admit that in life
‘there are truly two lives— does not of
necessity mean that we save him from
death and disaster; but indeed that we
render him happier, inasmuch as we try,
to improve him. Moral salvation is the
greatest salvation; and yet, what a trifle
this seems, as everything seems that is

done on the loftiest summits of soul.
87 ,
Wisdom and Destiny

Was the penitent thief not saved; and
that not alone in the Christian sense of
the word, but in its fullest, most perfect
meaning? Still had he to die, and at
that very hour; but he died eternally
happy; because at the very last moment
he too had been loved, and a Being of
infinite wisdom had declared that his soul
had not been without value; that his soul,
too, had been good, and had not passed
through the world unperceived of all
men.

§ 35

As we go deeper down into life we
discover the secret of more and more
sorrow and helplessness. We see that
many souls round us lead idle and foolish
lives, because they believe they are useless,
unnoticed by all, unloved, and convinced
they have nothing within them that is

worthy of love. But to the sage the hour
88
Wisdom and Destiny

must come when every soul that exists
claims his glance, his approval, his love —
if only because it possesses the mysterious.
gift of existence. The hour must come
when he sees that falsehood and weakness
and vice are but on the surface; when his
eye shall pierce through, and discover the
strength, and the truth, and the virtue that
lie underneath. Happy and blessed hour,
when wickedness stands forth revealed as
goodness bereft of its guide; and treachery
is seen to be loyalty, for ever astray from
the highway of happiness; and hatred be-
comes only love, in poignant despair, that
is digging its grave. Then, unsuspected
of any, shall it be with all those who are
near the good man as it was with the
penitent thief; into the humblest soul
that will thus have been saved by a look,
or a word, or a silence, shall the true
happiness fall — the happiness fate cannot

touch ; that brings to all men the oblivion
89
Wisdom and Destiny

| it gave unto Socrates, and causes each one
'to forget, until nightfall, that the death-
| giving cup had been drained ere the sun

oon

, went down.

§ 36.

The inner life, perhaps, is not what we
deem it to be. There are as many kinds
of inner lives as there are of external lives.
Into these tranquil regions the smallest
may enter as readily as he who is greatest,
for the gate that leads thither is not always
the gate of the intellect. It often may
happen that the man of vast knowledge
shall knock at this gate in vain, reply being
made from within by the man who knows
nothing. The inner life that is surest, most
lasting, possessed of the uttermost beauty,

—

“must needs be the one that consciousness

_ slowly erects in itself, with the aid of all
that is purest in the soul. And he is wise _

~_who has learned that this life should be | /

Qo
at las last we look down_on the flames ‘whose
a light. has helped our ascent. , But not many

Wisdom and Destiny

nourished on every event of the day: he
to whom deceit or betrayal serves but to
enhance his wisdom: he in whom evil a
becomes fuel for the flame of love.

is wise who at last sees in suffering only
the light that it sheds. on his soul; and
whose eyes never rest on the shadow it
casts upon those who have sent it towards
him. And wiser still is the man to whom
sorrow and joy not only bring increase of
consciousness, but also the knowledge that
something exists superior to consciousness
even. To have reached this point is to
reach the summit of inward life, whence

can climb so high; and happiness may be

achieved in the less ardent valley below,

where the flames spring darkly to life.

And there are existences still more ob-

scure which yet have their places of refuge.

There are some that instinctively fashion
91

|
|
a
Wisdom and Destiny

inward lives for themselves. There are
some that, bereft of initiative or of
intelligence, never discover the path that
leads into themselves, and are never aware
of all that their refuge contains; and
yet will their actions be wholly the same
as the actions of those whose intellect
weighs every treasure. There are some
who desire only good, though they know
not wherefore they desire it, and have no
_ suspicion that goodness i is the one fixed >
' star of loftiest consciousness. The inner .
: life ‘begins when the soul becomes good, is
and not when the intellect ripens. ‘It is”
- somewhat strange that this inner life can
“never be formed out of evil. No inner
life is for him whose soul is bereft of all
nobleness. He may have full knowledge
of self; he may know, it may be, where-
fore he shuns goodness; and yet shall he
seek in vain for the refuge, the strength,
the treasure of invisible gladness, that form
g2

me
Wisdom and Destiny

the possessions of him who can fearlessly
enter his heart. For the inward life is
built up of a certain rejoicing of soul;
and the soul can never be happy if it
possess not, and love not, something that
is pure. It may perhaps err in its choice,
but then even will it be happier than the
soul to which it has never been given to
choose.

§ 37.

And thus are we truly saving a man
if we bring it about that he loves evil
somewhat less than he loved it before;
for we are helping that man to construct,
deep down in his soul, the refuge where-
against destiny shall brandish her weapons
in’ vain. This refuge is the monument
of consciousness, or, it may be, of love;
for love is nothing but consciousness, still
vaguely in search of itself; and veritable

93
Wisdom and Destiny

consciousness nothing but love that at last
has emerged from the shadow. And it is
in the deepest recess of this refuge that
the soul shall kindle the wondrous fire
of her joy. And this joy of the soul
is like unto no other joy; and even as
material fire will chase away deadly disease

from the earth, so will the joy of the soul ©

scatter sorrow that malevolent destiny
brings. It arises not from exterior happi-
“ness; it arises not from satisfied self-love ;
for the joy that self-love procures becomes
less as the soul becomes nobler, but the
joy of pure love increases as nobility comes
to the soul. Nor is this joy born of pride;
for to be able to smile at its beauty is not
enough to bring joy to the soul. The
soul that has sought in itself has the right
to know of its beauty; but to brood on
this beauty too much, to become over-
‘conscious thereof, were perhaps to detract
somewhat from the unconsciousness of its

94,

pet
Wisdom and Destiny

love. The joy that I speak of takes not
from love what it adds unto consciousness ;
for in this joy, and in this joy alone, do
consciousness and love become one, feed-
ing each on the other, each gaining from
that which it gives. The striving intellect
may well know happiness beyond the reach
of the satisfied body; but the soul that
grows nobler has joys that are often
denied to the striving intellect. These
two wil often unite and labour together
at building the house within. But still it
will happen at times that both work apart,
and widely different then are the structures
each will erect. And were this to be so,
and the being I loved best of all in the
world came and asked me which he should
choose — which refuge I held to be most
unattackable, sweetest, profoundest—I
would surely advise him to shelter his

~ destiny in the refuge of the soul that

~~ grows nobler. a

~

95
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 38.

is the sage never to suffer? Shall no
geosm ever break on the roof of his dwell-
ing, no traps be laid to ensnare him?
ShaJl wife and friends never fail him?
Must his father not die, and his mother,
his brothers, his sons — must all these not
die like the rest? Shall angels stand
guard at each highway through which
sorrow can pass into man? Did not
Christ Himself weep as He stood be-
fore Lazarus’ tomb? Had not Marcus
Aurelius to suffer — from Commodus,
the son who already showed signs of
the monster he was to become; from
Faustina, the wife whom he loved, but
who cared not for him? Was not destiny’s
hand laid heavy on Paulus A°milius, who
was fully as wise as Timoleon? did not
both his sons die, one five days before his

96
Wisdom and Destiny

triumph in Rome, and the other but three
days after? What becomes of the refuge,
then, where wisdom keeps watch over
happiness? Must we take back all we
have said? and is wisdom yet one more
illusion, by whose aid the soul would
fain conciliate reason, and justify cravings
that experience is sure to reject as being
opposed to reason?

§ 39.

Nay, in truth, the sage too must suffer.
He suffers; and suffering forms a con-
stituent part of his wisdom. He will
suffer, perhaps, more than most men, for
that his nature is far more complete. And

Meet tt emerataine

being nearer to all mankind, as the wise
~~ ever must be, his ‘suffering will be but the —
7 greater, fe for the sorrows of others _ are . his. |
~ He will suffer in his flesh, in his heart, in
his spirit; for there are sides in all these

7 97
Wisdom and Destiny

that no wisdom on earth can dispute against
destiny. And so he accepts his suffering,
but is not discouraged thereby; not for
him are the chains that it fastens on those
who cringe down before it, unaware that
it is but a messenger sent by a mightier
personage, whom a bend in the road hides
from view. Needs must the sage, like his
1eighbour, be startled from sleep by the
shouts of the truculent envoy, by the blows
at the door that cause the whole house to
tremble. He, too, must go down and par~
ley. But yet, as he listens, his eyes are not
fixed on this bringer of evil tidings; his
glance will at times be lifted over the mes-
senger’s shoulder, will scan the dust on
the horizon in search of the mighty idea
that perhaps may be near at hand. And
indeed, when our thoughts rest on fate,
at such times as happiness enfolds us, we
feel that no great misfortune can be sud-
denly burst upon us. The proportions
98
Wisdom and Destiny

will change, it is true, when the blow
falls; but it is equally true that before
the misfortune can wholly destroy the
abiding courage within us, it first must
triumph in our heart over all we adore,
over all we admire, and love. And what
alien power can expel from our soul a
feeling and thought that we hurl not our-
selves from its throne? Physical suffering
apart, not a single sorrow exists that can
touch us except through our thoughts; and
whence do our thoughts derive the wea-
pons wherewith they attack or defend us?
We suffer but little from suffering itself;
but from the manner wherein we accept
it overwhelming sorrow may spring. ‘ His
unhappiness was caused by himself,” said
a thinker of one whose eyes never looked
over the brutal messenger’s shoulder — “his
_unhappiness was caused by himself; for all

Aid PDE CEN ORE

“misery is inward, ‘and caused by ‘ourselves.

we ASTI

We are wrong in believing that it comes
aisiet inhi eee POMS
99
Wisdom and Destiny

from without. For indeed we create 1 it

PORT peter Ne sagen pte aa —e eee Ser)

within Us, out ut of our very substance.”

r

$40. 5

It is only in the manner of our facing
the event that its active force consists.
Assemble ten men who, like Paulus
Emilius, have lost both their sons at
the moment when life seemed sweetest,
then will the misfortune appear to vary
in every one. Misfortune enters within
us, but must of necessity yield obedience
to all our commands. Even as the order
may be that it finds inscribed on the thres-
hold, so will it sow, or destroy, or reap.
If my neighbour, a commonplace man,
were to lose his two sons at the moment
when fate had granted his dearest desires,
then would darkness steal over all, un-
relieved by a glimmer of light; and mis-

fortune itself, contemptuous of its too
100
Wisdom and Destiny

facile success, would leave naught behind
but a handful of colourless cinders. Nor
is it necessary for me to see my neighbour
again to be aware that his sorrow will
have brought to him pettiness only ; for
sorrow does merely restore to us that
which our soul had lent in happier days.

§ 41.

But this was the misfortune that befell
Paulus #milius. Rome, still aglow with
his triumph, waited, dismayed, wondering
what was to happen. Were the gods
defying the sage, and how would the sage
reply? Would the hero be crushed by
his sorrow, or would sorrow acknowledge
its master? Mankind, at moments like
these, seems aware that destiny is yet once
again making trial of the strength of her
arm, and that change of some kind must

befall if her blow crush not where it
Iol :
Wisdom and Destiny

alights. And see with what eagerness
men at such moments will question the
eyes of their chiefs for the password
against the invisible.

But Paulus AEmilius has gathered to-
gether an assembly of the people of Rome ;
he advances gravely towards them, and
thus does he speak: “I, who never yet
feared anything that was human, have,
amongst such as were divine, always had
a dread of fortune as faithless and incon-
stant ; and, for the very reason that in this
war she had been as a favourable gale in
all my affairs, I still expected some change
and reflux of things. In one day I passed
the Ionian Sea, and reached Corcyra from
Brundisium ; thence in five more I sacri-
ficed at Delphi, and in other five days
came to my forces in Macedonia, where,
after I had finished the usual sacrifices for
the purifying of the army, I entered on

my duties, and in the space of fifteen days
102
Wisdom and Destiny

put an honourable period to the war.
Still retaining a jealousy of fortune, even
from the smooth current of my affairs,
and seeing myself secure and free from
the danger of any enemy, I chiefly dreaded
the change of the goddess at sea, whilst
conveying home my victorious army, vast
spoils, and a captive king. Nay, indeed,
after I was returned to you safe, and saw
the city full of joy, congratulating, and
sacrifices, yet still I distrusted, well know-
ing that fortune never conferred any great
benefits that were unmixed and unattended
with probabilities of reverse. Nor could
my mind, that was still as it were in labour,
and always foreseeing something to befall
this city, free itself from this fear, until
this great misfortune befell me in my own
family, and till, in the midst of those days
set apart for triumph, I carried two of the
best of sons, my only destined successors,

one after another to their funerals. Now,
103
Wisdom and Destiny

therefore, I am myself safe from danger,
at least as to what was my greatest care;
and I trust and am verily persuaded that,
for the time to come, fortune will prove
constant and harmless unto you; since
she has sufficiently wreaked her jealousy
at our great successes on me and mine,
and has made the conqueror as marked
an example of human instability as the
captive whom he led in triumph, with
this only difference, that Perseus, though
conquered, does yet enjoy his children,
_ while the conqueror Amilius is deprived

of his.”

§ 42.

This was the Roman fashion of accept-
ing the greatest sorrow that can befall
a man at the moment when sorrow is
felt the most keenly — at the moment of
his greatest happiness. And there are
many ways of accepting misfortune — as

104
Wisdom and Destiny

many, indeed, as there are generous feelings
or thoughts to be found on the earth;
and every one of those thoughts, every one
of those feelings, has a magic wand that
transforms, on the threshold, the features
and vestments of sorrow. Job would have
said, “ The Lord gave and the Lord hath
taken away: blessed be the name of the
Lord”; and Marcus Aurelius perhaps,
“If it be no longer allowed me to love
chose I loved high above all, it is doubt-
less that I may learn to love those whom
I Jove not yet.”

§ 43. —

And let us not think that these are
mere empty words wherewith they con-
sole themselves, words that in vain seek
to hide the wound that bleeds but the
more for the effort. But if it were so,

if empty words could console, that surely
108
Wisdom and Destiny

were better than to be bereft of all con-
solation. And further, if we have to
admit that all this is illusion, must we
not, in mere justice, also admit that illu-
sion is the solitary thing that the soul
can possess; and in the name of what
other illusion shall we venture to rate
this illusion so lightly? Ah, when the
night falls and the great sages I speak
of go back to their lonely dwelling, and
look on the chairs round the hearth where
their children once were, but never shall
be again — then, truly, can they not escape
some part of the sorrow that comes, over-
whelming, to those whose’ suffering no
noble thought chasters. For it were
wrong to attribute to beautiful feeling
and thought a virtue they do not possess.
There are external tears that they cannot
restrain; there are holy hours when wis-
dom cannot yet console. But, for the

last time let us say it, suffering we cannot
106
Wisdom and Destiny

avoid, for suffering there ever must be;
still does it rest with ourselves to choose
what our suffering shall bring. And
let us not think that this choice, which
the eye cannot see, is truly a very small
matter, and helpless to comfort a sorrow
whose cause the eyes never cease to be-
hold. Out of small matters like these
are all moral joys built up, and these are
profounder far than intellectual or physical
joys. Translate into words the feeling
that spurs on the | hero, and how trivial it.
“seems! Insignificant too does the idea of
“~“duty appear that Cato the younger had
formed, when compared with the enormous
disturbance it caused in a mighty empire,
or the terrible death it brought on. And
yet, was not Cato’s idea far greater than
the disturbance, or death, that ensued?
Do we not feel, even now, that Cato was
right? And was not his life rendered
truly and nobly happy, thanks to this very

107
*

Wisdom and Destiny

idea, that the reason of man will not even
consider, so unreasonable does it appear?
All that ennobles our life, all that we
respect in ourselves, the mainsprings of
nur virtue, the limits that feeling will
ven impose upon vices or crimes — all
these appear veriest trifles when viewed by
the cold eye of reason; and yet do they
fashion the laws that govern every man’s

uife. Would life be endurable if we did not

obey many truths that our reason rejects?

“The wretchedest even obeys one of these;

and the more truths there are that he yields
to, the less wretched does he become.
The assassin will tell you, “I murder, it
is true, but at least do not steal.” And
he who has stolen steals, but does not
betray ; and he who betrays would at least
not betray his brother. And thus does
each one cling for refuge to his last frag-
ment of spiritual beauty. No man can

have fallen so low but he still has a retreat
108
Wisdom and Destiny

in his soul, where he ever shall find a
few drops of pure water, and be girt up
anew with the strength that he needs
to go on with his life. For here again
reason is helpless, | unable to comfort; —

 

she must halt on the threshold of the
thief’s last asylum, even as she must halt
on the threshold of Job’s resignation, of
the love of Marcus Aurelius, of the sac-
rifice made by Antigone. She halts, is
bewildered, she does not approve; and
yet knows full well that to rise in revolt
were only to combat the light whereof
she is shadow; for amidst all this she is
but as one who stands with the sun full
upon him. His shadow is there at his
feet; as he moves, it will follow; as he
rises or stoops, its outline will alter; but
this shadow is all he commands, that he
masters, possesses, of the dazzling light
that enfolds him. And so has reason her
being, too, beneath a superior light, and
10g
Wisdom and Destiny

the shadow cannot affect the calm, unvary-
ing splendour. Far distant as Marcus
Aurelius may be from the traitor, it is
still from the selfsame well that they both
draw the holy water that freshens their
soul; and this well is not to be found
in the intellect. For, strangely enough, it
is not in our reason that moral life has
its being; and he who would let _reason
govern his life would be the most jost wretched
“of men. There is not a virtue, a beauti-
ful thought, or a generous deed, but has
most of its roots hidden far away from

 

that which can be understood or ex-
plained. Well might man be proud could
he trace every virtue, and joy, and his
whole inward life, to the one thing he
truly possesses, the one thing on which he
can depend—zin a word, to his reason.
But do what he will, the smallest event
that arrives will quickly convince him

that reason is wholly unable to offer him
1190
' Wisdom and Destiny

;
shelter; for in truth we are beings quite | lee,
other than merely reasonable creatures.

§ 44.

But if it be not our reason that chooses
what suffering shall bring us, whereby is
the choice then made? By the life we
have lived till then, the life that has
moulded our soul. Wisdom matures but
slowly; her fruits shall not quickly be
gathered. If my life has not been as that
of Paulus AEmilius, there shall be no
comfort for me in the thoughts whereby
he was consoled, not though every sage in
the world were to come and repeat them
to me. The angels that dry our eyes bear
the form and the features of all we have
said and thought — above all, of what we
have done, prior to the hour of misfortune.
When Thomas Carlyle (a sage, although

somewhat morbid) lost the wife he had
IIr
Wisdom and Destiny

tenderly loved, with whom he had lived
forty years, then did his sorrow too, with
marvellous exactness, become as had been
the bygone life of his love. And there-
fore was this sorrow of his majestic and
vast ; consoling and torturing alike in the
midst of his self-reproach, his regret, and
his tenderness — as might be meditation
or prayer on the shore of a gloomy sea.
In the sorrow that floods our heart we
have, as it were, a synthetic presentment
of all the days that are gone; and as these
were, so shall our sorrow be poignant, or
tender and gentle. If there be in my life
no noble or generous deeds that memory
can bring back to me, then, at the inevitable
moment when memory melts into tears,
must these tears, too, be bereft of all that
is generous or noble. For tears in them-
selves have no colour, that they may the
better reflect the past life of our soul; and

this reflection becomes our chastisement
112
Wisdom and Destiny

or our reward. There is but one thing
that never can turn into suffering, and
that is the good we have done. When we
lose one we love, our bitterest’ tears are
called forth by the memory of hours when
we loved not enough. If we always had
smiled on the one who is gone, there
would be no despair in our grief; and
some sweetness would cling to our tears,
reminiscent of virtues and happiness. For
our recollections of veritable love — which
indeed is the act of virtue containing all
others — call from our eyes the same
sweet, tender tears as those most beautiful
hours wherein memory was born. Sorrow
is just, above all; and even as the cast
stands ready awaiting the molten bronze,
so is our whole life expectant of the hour
of sorrow, for it is then we receive our
wage.

8 113
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 45.

Here, standing close to the mightiest
pillar of destiny’s throne, we may see
once again how restricted her power be-
comes on such as surpass her in wisdom.
For she is barbarian still, and many men
tower above her. The commonplace life
still supplies her with weapons, which to-
day are old-fashioned and crude. Her
mode of attack, in exterior life, is as it
always has been, as it was in CEdipus’
days. She shoots like a blear-eyed bow-
man, aiming straight ahead of her; but if
the target be raised somewhat higher than
usual, her arrows fall harmless to earth.

Suffering, sorrow, tears, regrets — these
words, that vary so slightly in meaning,
are names that we give to emotions which
in no two men are alike. If we probe to
the heart of these words, these emotions,

114
Wisdom and Destiny

we find they are only the track that is
left by our faults; and there where these
faults were noble (for there are noble
faults as there are mean or trivial virtues)
our sorrow will be nearer akin to veritable
happiness than the happiness of those
whose consciousness still is confined within
narrowest limits. Would Carlyle have
desired to exchange the magnificent sorrow
that flooded his soul, and blossomed sc
tenderly there, for the conjugal joys, super-
ficial and sunless, of his happiest neighbour
in Chelsea? And was not Ernest Renan’s
grief, when Henriette, his sister, died,
more grateful to the soul than the absence
of grief in the thousands of others who
have no love to give to a sister? Shall
our pity go forth to him who, at times,
will weep on the shore of an infinite sea,
or to the other who smiles all his life,
without cause, alone in his little room?
“ Happiness, sorrow’ — could we only
115
Wisdom and Destiny

escape from ourselves for one instant and
taste of the hero’s sadness, would there
be many content to return to their own
superficial delights ?

Do happiness and sorrow, then, only
exist in ourselves, and that even when
they seem to come from without? All
that surrounds us will turn to angel
or devil, according as our heart may
be. Joan of Arc held communion with
saints, Macbeth with witches, and yet

were the voices the same. The destiny |

whereat we murmur may be other, per-
haps, than we think. She has only the
weapons we give her; she is neither just
nor unjust, nor does it lie in her province
to deliver sentence on man. She whom
we take to be goddess is a disguised
messenger only, come very simply to warn
us on certain days of our life that the
hour has sounded at last when we needs

must judge ourselves.
116
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 46.

Men of inferior degree, it is true, are

not given to judging themselves, and |

therefore is it that fate passes judgment
upon them. They are the slaves of
a destiny of almost unvarying sternness,
for it is only when man_has been judged

 

by himself that destiny can be trans-

 

“formed. Men such as these will not

master, or alter within them, the event
that they meet; nay, they themselves
become morally transformed by the very
first thing that draws near them. If
misfortune befall them, they grovel before
it and stoop down to its level; and mis-
fortune, with them, would seem always
to wear its poorest and commonest aspect.
They see the finger of fate in every least
thing that may happen — be it choice of
profession, a friendship that greets them,

117
Wisdom and Destiny _

a woman who passes, and smiles. Te
them chance and destiny always are one;
but chance will be seldom propitious if
accepted as destiny. Hostile forces at
once take possession of all that is vacant
within us, nor filled by the strength of
our soul; and whatever is void in the
heart or the mind becomes a fountain of
fatal influence. The Margaret of Goethe
and Ophelia of Shakespeare had perforce
to yield meekly to fate, for they were so
feeble that each gesture they witnessed
seemed fate’s own gesture to them. But
yet, had they only possessed some frag-
ment of Antigone’s strength — the Antig-
one of Sophocles — would they not then
have transformed the destinies of Hamlet
and Faust as well as their own? And if
Othello had taken Corneille’s Pauline
to wife and not Desdemona, would Des-
demona’s destiny then, all else remaining
unchanged, have dared to come within
118
Wisdom and Destiny

reach of the enlightened love of Pauline ?
Where was it, in body or soul, that grim
fatality lurked? And though the body
may often be powerless to add to its
strength, can this ever be true of the
soul? Indeed, the more that we think
of it, the clearer does it become that
there could be one destiny only that
might truly be said to triumph over
man, the one that might have the power

loudly to cry unto all, “From this day

onward there shall come no more strength

to thy soul, neither strength nor ennoble-

ment.” But is there a destiny in the
world empowered to hold such language?

§ 47.

And yet virtue often is chastised, and
the advent of misfortune hastened, by the
soul’s very strength ; for the greater our
love may be, the greater the surface

11g,
Wisdom and Destiny

becomes we expose to majestic sorrow;
wherefore none the less does the sage
never cease his endeavours to enlarge this
beautiful surface. Yes, it must be ad-
mitted, destiny is not always content to
crouch in the darkness; her ice-cold hands
will at times go prowling in the light,
and seize on more beautiful victims. The
tragic name of Antigone has already
escaped me; and there will, doubtless,
be many will say, “She surely fell victim
to destiny, all her great force notwith-
standing; and is she not the instance we
long have been seeking in vain?” It
cannot be gainsaid: Antigone fell into
the hands of the ruthless goddess, for the
reason that there lay in her soul three
times the strength of any ordinary woman.
She died; for fate had contrived it so
that she had to choose between death and
what seemed to her a sister’s imperative

duty. She suddenly found herself wedged

T20
Wisdom and Destiny

between death and love—love of the
purest and most disinterested kind, its
object being a shade she would never
behold on earth. And if destiny thus
was enabled to lure her into the mur-
derous angle that duty and death had
formed, it was only because her soul,
that was loftier far than the soul of
the others, saw, stretching before it, the
insurmountable barrier of duty — that her
poor sister Ismene could not see, even
when it was shown her. And, at that
moment, as they both stood there on the
threshold of the palace, the same voices
spoke to them; Antigone listening only
to the voice from above, wherefore she
died; Ismene unconscious of any save
that which came from below —and she
lived. But instil into Antigone’s soul
something of the weakness that paralysed
Ophelia and Margaret, would destiny then

have thought it of service to beckon to
121
Wisdom and Destiny

death as the daughter of Cédipus issued
from the doorway of Creon’s palace? It
was, therefore, solely because of the
strength of her soul that destiny was
able to triumph. And, indeed, it is this
that consoles the wise and the just — the
heroes ; ; destiny can vanquish them only _

A itakdinke CARS RTA Tay Reema ase Meare es Sen

by the good d she compels them to do...
“Other men are like cities with hundred
gates, that she finds unguarded and open;
but the upright man is a fortified city,
with the one gate only — of light; and
this gate remains closed till love be in-
duced to knock, and to crave admission.
Other men she compels to obey her ; and
destiny, doing her will, wills nothing but
evil; but would she subdue the upright,
she needs must desire noble acts. Darkness
then will no longer enwrap her approach.
The upright man is secure in the light that
enfolds him; and only by a light more

radiant still can she hope to prevail.
I22
Wisdom and Destiny

Destiny then will become more beautiful
still than her victim. Ordinary men she
will place between personal sorrow and
the misfortune of others; but to master
the hero or saint, she must cause him to
choose between the happiness of others
and the grief that shall fall on himself.
Ordinary men she lays siege to with the
aid of all that is ugly; against the others
she perforce must enlist whatever is noblest
onearth. Against the first she has thou-
sands of weapons, the very stones in the
road becoming engines of mischief; but
the others she can only attack with one
irresistible sword, the gleaming sword of
duty and truth. In Antigone’s story is
found the whole tale of destiny’s empire
on wisdom. Jesus who died for us,
Curtius who leaped into the gulf, Socrates
who refused to desist from his teaching,
the sister of charity who yields up her life
to tending the sick, the humble wayfarer
123
Wisdom and Destiny

who perishes seeking to rescue his fellows
from death —all these have been forced
to choose, all these bear the mark
jof Antigone’s glorious wound on their
breast. For truly those who live in the
light have their magnificent perils also ;
‘and wisdom has danger for such as shrink
ifrom self-sacrifice, though it may be that
jthey who shrink from self-sacrifice are
iperhaps not very wise.

§ 48.

Pronounce the word “destiny,” and in
the minds of all men an image arises of
gloom and of terror —of death. In their
thoughts they regard it, instinctively, as
the lane that leads straight to the tomb.
Most often, indeed, it is only the name
that they give unto death, when its hand
is not visible yet. Itis death that looms in
the future, the shadow of death upon life.

124
Wisdom and Destiny

“None can escape his destiny” we often
exclaim when we hear of death lying in
wait for the traveller at the bend of the
road. But were the traveller to encounter
happiness instead, we would never ascribe
this to destiny ;. if we did, we should have
in our mind a far different goddess. And
yet, are not joys to be met with on the
highways of life that are greater than any
misfortune, more momentous even than
death? May a happiness not be en-
countered that the eye cannot see? and is
it not of the nature of happiness to be
less manifest than misfortune, to become
ever less apparent to the eye as it reaches
loftier heights? But to this we refuse
to pay heed. The whole village, the
town, will flock to the spot where some
wretched adventure takes place; but there
are none will pause for an instant and
let their eyes rest on a kiss, or a vision
of beauty that gladdens the soul, a ray
125
Wisdom and Destiny

of love that illumines the heart. And
yet may the kiss be productive of joy
no less great than the pain that follows
a wound. We are unjust; we never
associate destiny with happiness; and if
we do not regard it as being inseparable
from death, it is only to connect it with
disaster even greater than death itself.

§ 49.

Were I to refer to the destiny of
CEdipus, Joan of Arc, Agamemnon, you
would give not a thought to their lives,
but only behold the last moments of
all, the pathway of death. You would
stoutly maintain that their destiny was
of the saddest, for that their end was
sad. You forget, however, that death
can never be happy; but nevertheless it
is thus we are given to judging of life.

It is as though death swallowed all; and
126
Wisdom and Destiny

should accident suddenly end thirty years
of unclouded joy, the thirty years would
be hidden away from our eyes by the
gloom of one sorrowful hour.

§ 50.

It is wrong to think of destiny only
in connection with death and _ disaster.
When shall we cease to believe that death,
and not life, is important; that misfortune
is greater than happiness? Why, when
we try to sum up a man’s destiny, keep
our eyes fixed only on the tears that he
shed, and never on the smiles of his joy?
Where have we learned that death fixes
the value of life, and not life that of
death? We deplore the destiny of
Socrates, Duncan, Antigone, and many
others whose lives were noble; we deplore
their destiny because their end was sudden
and cruel; and we are fain to admit that

127
Wisdom and Destiny

misfortune prevails over wisdom and virtue
alike. But, first of all, you yourself are
neither just nor wise if you seek in wisdom
and justice aught else but wisdom and
justice alone. And further, what right
have we thus to sum up an entire exis-
tence in the one hour of death? Why
conclude, from the fact that Socrates and
Antigone met with unhappy ends, that it
was their wisdom or virtue brought un-
happiness to them? Does death occupy
more space in life than birth? Yet do you
not take the sage’s birth into account as
you ponder over his destiny. Happiness
or unhappiness arises from all that we do
from the day of our birth to the day of
our death; and it is not in death, but in-
deed in the days and the years that precede
it, that we can discover a man’s true happi-
ness or sorrow —in a word, his destiny.
We seem to imagine that the sage, whose

terrible death is written in history, spent
128
Wisdom and Destiny

all his life in sad anticipation of the end
his wisdom prepared; whereas in reality
the thought of death troubles the wise far
less than it troubles the wicked. Socrates
had far less cause than Macbeth to dread
an unhappy end. And unhappy as his
death may have been, it at least had not
darkened his life; he had not spent all
his days in dying preliminary deaths, as
did the Thane of Cawdor. But it is
dificult for us not to believe that a
wound, that bleeds a few hours, must
crumble away into nothingness all the
peace of a lifetime.

§ 51.

I do not pretend that destiny is just,
that it rewards the good and punishes
the wicked. What soul that were sure
of reward could ever claim to be good?

But we are less just than destiny even,
S 129
Wisdom and Destiny

when it is destiny that we judge. Our
eyes see only the sage’s misfortune, for
misfortune is known to us all; but we
see not his happiness, for to understand
the happiness of the wise and the just
whose destinies we endeavour to gauge,
we must needs be possessed of wisdom
and justice that shall be fully equal to
theirs. When a man of inferior soul
endeavours to estimate a great sage’s
happiness, this happiness flows through
his fingers like water; yet is it heavy as
gold, and as brilliant as gold, in the hand
of a brother sage. For to each is the
happiness given that he can best under- .
stand. The sage’s misfortune may often
resemble the one that befalls other men;
but his happiness has nothing in common
with that which he who is not wise terms
happiness. In happiness there are far
more regions unknown than there are in
misfortune. The voice of misfortune is

130
Wisdom and Destiny

ever the same; happiness becomes the
more silent as it penetrates deeper.
When we put our misfortunes into one
scale of the balance, each of us lays, in the
other, all that he deems to be happiness.
The savage flings feathers, and powder, and
alcohol into the scale; civilised men some
gold, a few days of delirium ; but the sage
will deposit therein countless things our eyes
cannot see —all his soul, it may be, and even
the misfortune that he will have purified.

§ 52.

There is nothing in all the world more
just than happiness, nothing that will more
faithfully adopt the form of our soul, or
so carefully fill the space that our wisdom
flings open. Yet is it most silent of all
that there is in the world. The Angel of
Sorrow can speak every language —there
is not a word but she knows; but the lips

131
@
Wisdom and Destiny

of the Angel of Happiness are sealed, save
when she tells of the savage’s joys. It is
hundreds of centuries past that misfortune
was cradled, but happiness seems even now
to have scarcely emerged from its in-
fancy. There are some men have learned
to be happy ; why are there none whose
great gladness has urged them to lift up
their voice in the name of the silent
Archangel who has flooded their soul
with light? Are we not almost teaching
happiness if we do only speak of it;
invoking it, if we let no day pass without
pronouncing its name? And is it not the
first duty of those who are happy to tell
of their gladness to others? All men can
learn to be happy ; and the teaching of it
is easy. If you live among those who
daily call blessing on life, it shall not be
Jong ere you will call blessing on yours.
Smiles are as catching as tears ; and periods
men have termed happy, were periods when
132
Wisdom and Destiny

there existed some who knew of their
happiness. Happiness rarely is absent ;
it is we that know not of its presence.
The greatest felicity avails us nothing
if we know not that we are happy;
there is more joy in the smallest delight
whereof we are conscious, than in the
approach of the mightiest happiness that
enters not into our soul. There are only
too many who think that what they have
cannot be happiness; and therefore is it
the duty of such as are happy, to prove
to the others that they only possess what
each man possesses deep down in the
depths of his heart. To be happy is
only to have freed one’s soul from the
unrest of happiness. It were well if,
from time to time, there should come
to us one to whom fortune had granted
a dazzling, superhuman felicity, that all
men regarded with envy; and if he were
very simply to say to us, “ Allis mine that
133
Wisdom and Destiny

you pray for each day: I have riches,
and youth, and health ; I have glory, and
power, and love; and if to-day I am
truly able to call myself happy, it is not
on account of the gifts that fortune has
deigned to accord me, but because I have
learned from these gifts to fix my eyes
far above happiness. If my marvellous
travels and victories, my strength and my
love, have brought me the peace and the
gladness I sought, it is only because they
have taught me that it is not in them
that the veritable gladness and peace can
be found. It was in myself they existed,
before all these triumphs; and still in
myself are they now, after all my achieve-
ment; and I know full well that had but
a little more wisdom been mine, I might
have enjoyed all I now enjoy without the
aid of so much good fortune. I know
that to-day I am happier still than I was
yesterday, because _j have learned at Jast_.
134
Wisdom and Destiny

that I stand in no need of good fortune

 

~“i order to free my soul, to bring peace

 

 

“to my thoughts, to enlighten my heart.”

§ 53.

Of this the sage is fully aware, though
no superhuman happiness may have de-
scended upon him. The upright man
knows it too, though he be less wise than
the sage, and his consciousness less fully
developed; for an act of goodness or
justice brings with it a kind of inarticu-
late consciousness that often becomes more
effective, more faithful, more loving, than
the consciousness that springs into being
from the very deepest thought. Acts of
this nature bring, above all, a special know-
ledge of happiness. Strive as we may, |
our loftiest thoughts are always uncer-
tain, unstable; but the light of a goodly
deed shines steadily on, and is lasting.

135
Wisdom and Destiny

There are times when deep thought is
no more than merely fictitious conscious-
ness; but an act of charity, the heroic
duty fulfilled — these are true con-
sclousness; in other words, happiness
in action. The happiness of Marcus
Aurelius, who condones a mortal affront ;
of Washington, giving up power when he
feared that his glory was leading his
people astray — the happiness of these will
differ by far from that of some mean-
souled, venomous creature who might (if
such a thing may be assumed) by mere
chance have discovered some extraordinary
natural law. Long is the road that leads
from the satisfied brain to the heart at
rest, and only such joys will flourish there
as are proof against winter’s storms.
Happiness is a plant that thrives far more
readily in moral than in intellectual life.
Consciousness — the consciousness of hap-

Piness, above all—will not choose the
136
Wisdom and Destiny

intellect as a hiding-place for the treasure
it holds most dear. At times it would
almost seem as if all that is loftiest in
intellect, fraught with most comfort, is
transformed into consciousness only when
passed through an act of virtue. It suffices
not to discover new truths in the world of
thought or of fact. For ourselves, a truth
only lives from the moment it modifies,
purifies, sweetens something we have in
our soul. To be conscious of moral
improvement is of the essence of con-
sciousness. Some beings there are, of
vigorous intellect, whose intellect never
is used to discover a fault, or foster a
feeling of charity. And this happens
often with women. Incases where a man
and a woman have equal intellectual power,
the woman will always devote far less
of this power to acquiring moral self-
knowledge. And truly the intellect that
aims not at consciousness is but beating
137
Wisdom and Destiny

its wings in the void. Loss and cor-
ruption needs must ensue if the force of
our brain be not at once gathered up in
the purest vase of our heart. Nor can
such an intellect ever know happiness ;
nay, it seems to invite misfortune. For
intellect may be of the loftiest, mightiest,
jand yet perhaps never draw near unto
joy; but in the soul that is gentle, and
| pure, and good, sorrow cannot for ever
abide. And even though the boundary
line between intellect and consciousness
be not always as clearly defined as here
we seem to assume, even though a beauti-
ful thought in itself may be often a goodly
action — yet, none the less will a beautiful
thought, that springs not from noble
deed, or wherefrom noble deed shall not
|spring, add but little unto our felicity ;
(whereas a good deed, though it father
\no thought, will ever fall like soft bounti-

ful rain on our knowledge of happiness.
138
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 54.

“‘ How final must his farewell to happi-
ness have been,” exclaims Renan, speaking
of the renouncement of Marcus Aurelius—
“ how final must his farewell to happiness
have been, for him to be capable of such
excess! None will ever know how great
was the suffering of that poor, stricken
heart, or the bitterness the waxen brow
concealed, calm always, and even smiling.
It is true that the farewell to happi-
ness is the beginning of wisdom, and

the surest road to happiness. There is

 

eer,

 

 

nothing sweeter than the return of joy
that follows the yYenouncement of j " joy_as

 

“there is ‘nothing more exquisite, of keener

Renter

“deeper delight, than the enchantment of

Eee

_the disenchanted.”

Tn these tert tennis does a sage describe a
sage’s happiness ; but is it true that the

139

Teeege af anenay oe Semele enra)
Wisdom and Destiny

happiness of Marcus Aurelius, as of Renan
himself, arose only from the return of joy
that followed the renouncement of joy,
and from the enchantment of the dis-
enchanted? For then were it better that
wisdom be less, that we be the less dis-
enchanted. But what can the wisdom
desire that declares itself thus disen-
chanted? Was it not truth that it
sought? and is there a truth that can
stifle the love of truth in the depths of
a loyal heart? The truth that has taught
you that man is wicked and nature un-
just; that justice is futile, and love without
power, has indeed taught you nothing if
it have not at the same time revealed a
truth that is greater still, one that throws
on these disillusions a light more brilliant,
more ample, than the myriad flickering
beams it has quenched all around you.
For there lurks unspeakable pride, and
pride of the poorest kind, in thus
140
Wisdom and Destiny

declaring ourselves satisfied because we
can find satisfaction in nothing that is.
Such satisfaction, in truth, is discontent
only, too sluggish to lift its head; and
they only are discontented who no longer
would understand.

Does not the man who conceives it his
duty to forswear all happiness renounce
something as well that, as yet, has not
turned into happiness? And _ besides,
what are the joys to which we, bid this
somewhat affected farewell? It must
surely be right to discard all happiness
injurious to others; but happiness that
injures others will not long wear the sem-
blance of happiness in the eyes of the
sage. And when his wisdom at length
has revealed the profounder joys, will it
not be in all unconsciousness that he
renounces those of lesser worth?

Let us never put faith in the wisdom
or gladness that is based on contempt of

%4I
Wisdom and Destiny

a single existing thing; for contempt
and renouncement, its sickly offspring,
offer asylum to none but the weak and
the aged. We have only the right to
scorn a joy when such scorn is wholly
unconscious. But so long as we listen
to the voice of contempt or renounce-
ment, so long as we suffer these to flood
our heart with bitterness, so long must
the joy we discard bea joy that we still
desire.

We must beware lest there enter our
soul certain parasitic virtues. And re-
nouncement, often, is only a parasite.
Even if it do not enfeeble our inward
life, it must inevitably bring disquiet.
Just as bees cease from work at the
approach of an intruder into their hive,
so will the virtues and strength of the
soul into which contempt or renounce-
ment has entered, forsake all their tasks,

and eagerly flock round the curious guest
142
Wisdom and Destiny

that has come in the wake of pride; fox
so long as renouncement be conscious, so
long will the happiness found therein
have its origin truly in pride. And he
who is bent on renouncement had best,
first of all, forswear the delights of pride,
for these are wholly vain and wholly
deceptive.

§ 55.

Within reach of all, demanding neither
boldness nor energy, is this “ enchantment
of the disenchanted!”” But what name
shall we give to the man who renounces
that which brought happiness to him,
and rather would surely lose it to-day
than live in fear lest fortune haply de-
prive him thereof on the morrow? Is
the mission of wisdom only to peer into
the uncertain future, with ear on the
stretch for the footfall of sorrow that

143
Wisdom and Destiny

never may come — but deaf to the whirr
of the wings of the happiness that fills
all space?

Let us not look to renouncement for
happiness till we have sought it elsewhere
in vain. It is easy to be wise if we be
content to regard as happiness the void
that is left by the absence of happiness.
But it was not for unhappiness the sage
was created; and it is more glorious, as
well as more human, to be happy and still
to be wise. The supreme endeavour of
wisdom is only to seek in life for the fixed
point of happiness; but to seek this fixed
point in renouncement and farewell to
joy, is only to seek it in death. He who
moves not a limb is persuaded, perhaps,
he is wise; but was this the purpose where-
for mankind was created? Ours is the
choice — whether wisdom shall be the
honoured wife of our passions and feel-
ings, our thoughts and desires, or the

144 _
Wisdom and Destiny

melancholy. bride of death. Let the
tomb have its stagnant wisdom, but let
there be wisdom also for the hearth where
the fire still burns.

§ 56.

It is not by renouncing the joys that
are near us that we shall grow wise; but
as we grow wise we unconsciously abandon
the joys that now are beneath us. Even
so does the child, as years come to him,
give up one by one without thinking the
games that have ceased to amuse. And
just as the child learns far more from his
play than from work that is given him, so
does wisdom progress far more quickly in
happiness than in misfortune. It is only
one side of morality that unhappiness
throws into: light; and the man whom
sorrow has taught to be wise, is like one
who has loved and never been loved in

10 145
Wisdom and Destiny

return, There must always be something
unknown to the love whereto no other
love has made answer; and this, too, will
remain unknown to him whose wisdom
is born of sorrow.

“Ts happiness truly as happy as people
imagine?” was asked of two happy ones
once by a philosopher whom protracted
injustice had saddened. No; it is a thing
more desirable far, but also much less to
be envied, than people suppose; for it is
in itself quite other than they can conceive
who have never been perfectly happy. To
be gay is not to be happy, nor will he who
is happy always be gay. It is only the
little ephemeral pleasures that forever are
smiling ; and they die away as they smile.
But some loftiness once obtained, lasting
‘happiness becomes no less grave than
majestic sorrow. Wise men have said it
were best for us not to be happy, so that

happiness thus might be always the one
146
Wisdom and Destiny

thing desired. But how shall the sage,
to whom happiness never has come, be
aware that wisdom is the one thing alone
that happiness neither can sadden nor
weary? Those thinkers have learned to
love wisdom with a far more intimate love
whose lives have been happy, than those
whose lives have been sad. The wisdom
forced into growth by misfortune is dif-
ferent far from the wisdom that ripens
beneath happiness. The first, where it
seeks to console, must whisper of happi-
ness; the other tells of itself. He who
is sad is taught by his wisdom that hap-
piness yet may be his; he who is happy is
taught by his wisdom that he may become
wiser still. The discovery of happiness
may well be the great. aim of wisdom ;
and we needs must be happy ourselves
before we can know that wisdom itself
contains all.

147
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 57.

There are some who are wholly unable
to support the burden of joy. There is a
courage of happiness as well as a courage
of sorrow. It may even be true that per-
manent happiness calls for more strength
in man than permanent sorrow; for the
heart wherein wisdom is not delights more
in the expectation of that which it has not
yet, than in the full possession of all it

 

~ has ever ever desired. He in whom happi-
ness dwells is amazed at the heart that
finds aliment only in fear or in hope,
and that cannot be nourished on what it
possesses, though it possess all it ever
desired.
We often see men who are strong and
morally prudent whom happiness yet
overcomes. Not finding therein all they

sought, they do not defend it, or cling to
148
Wisdom and Destiny

it, with the energy needful in life. We
must have already acquired some not in-
considerable wisdom to be undismayed at
perceiving that happiness too has its sor-
row, and to be not induced by this sorrow
to think that ours cannot be the veritable
happiness. The most precious gift that
happiness brings is the knowledge that
springs up within us that it is not a thing
of mere ecstasy, but a thing that bids us
reflect. It becomes far less rare, far less
inaccessible, from the moment we know
that its greatest achievement is to give to
the soul that is able to prize it an increase
of consciousness, which the soul could else-
where never have found. To know what
happiness means is of “far more import.
ance to the soul of man than ‘to enjoy

 

“it. To be able long to love happiness
~~ great wisdom needs must be ours; but a
wisdom still greater for us to perceive, as
we lie in the bosom of cloudless joy, that

149
Wisdom and Destiny

the fixed and stable part of that joy is
found in the force which, deep down in
our consciousness, could render us happy
still though misfortune wrapped us

j around. Do not believe you are happy

till you have been led by your happiness
up to the heights whence itself disappears
from your gaze, but leaving you still,
unimpaired, the desire to live.

§ 58.

There are some profound thinkers, such
as Pascal, Schopenhauer, Hello, who seem
not to have been happy, for all that the
sense of the infinite, universal, eternal,
was loftily throned in their soul. But it
may well be an error to think that he
who gives voice to the multitude’s sorrow
must himself always be victim to great
personal despair. The horizon of sorrow,

surveyed from the height of a thought

150
Wisdom and Destiny

that has ceased to be selfish, instinctive,
or commonplace, differs but little from
the horizon of happiness when this last
is regarded from the height of a thought
of similar nature, but other in origin.
And after all, it matters but little whether
the clouds be golden or gloomy that
yonder float over the plain; the traveller
is glad to have reached the eminence
whence his eye may at last repose on
illimitable space. The sea is not the less
marvellous and mysterious to us though
white sails be not for ever flitting over
its surface; and neither tempest nor day
that is radiant and calm is able to bring
enfeeblement unto the life of our soul.
Enfeeblement comes through our dwell-
ing, by night and by day, in the airless
room of our cold, self-satisfied, trivial,
ungenerous thoughts, at a time when the
sky all around our abode is reflecting the
light of the ocean.
151
Wisdom and Destiny

But there is a difference perhaps be-
tween the sage and the thinker. It may
be that sorrow will steal over the thinker
as he stands on the height he has gained ;
but the sage by his side only smiles — and
this smile is so loyal, so human and natural,
that the humblest creature of all must
needs understand, and will gladly wel-
come it to him, as it falls like a flower to
the foot of the mountain. The thinker
throws open the road “which leads from
the seen to the unseen;” the sage throws
open the highway that takes us from that
which we love to-day to that which we
yet shall love, and the paths that ascend
from that which has ceased to console to
that which, for long time to come, shall
be laden with deep consolation. It is
needful, but not all-sufficient, to have re-
flected deeply and boldly on man, and
nature, and God; for the profoundest
thought is of little avail if it contain no

152
Wisdom and Destiny

germ of comfort. Indeed, it is only a
thought that the thinker, as yet, does not
wholly possess; as the other thoughts are,
too, that remain outside our normal, every-
day life. It is easier far to be sad and
dwell in affliction than at once to do what
time in the end will always compel us to
do: to shake ourselves free from affliction.
He who spends his days gloomily, in con-
stant mistrust of his fellows, will often
appear a profounder thinker than the other,
who lives in the faith and honest simplicity
wherein all men should dwell. Is there a
man can believe he has done all it lay in
his power to do if, as he meditates thus,
in the name of his brethren, on the sorrows
of life, he hides from them —anxious, per-
haps, not toweaken his grandiose picture of
sorrow — the reasons wherefore he accepts
life, reasons that must be decisive, since he
himself continues to live? The thought
must be incomplete surely whose object is
153
Wisdom and Destiny

nyt to console. It is easier for you to tell
me the cause of your sorrow than, very
simply, to speak of the deeper, the weightier
reasons that induce your instinct to cling
to this life whose distress you bemoan.
Which of us finds not, unsought, many
thousands of reasons for sorrow? It is
doubtless of service that the sage should
point out those that are loftiest, for the
loftiest reasons for sorrow must be on the
eve of becoming reasons for gladness and
joy. But reasons that have not within
them these germs of greatness and happi-
ness —and in moral life open spaces abound
where greatness and happiness blend —
these are surely not worthy of mention.
Before we can bring happiness to others,
we first must be happy ourselves ; nor will
happiness abide within us unless we confer
iton others. If there be a smile upon our
lips, those around us will soon smile too ;
and our happiness will become the truer
154_
Wisdom and Destiny

and deeper as we see that these others are
happy. “It is not seemly that I, who,
willingly, have brought sorrow to none,
should permit myself to be sad,” said
Marcus Aurelius, in one of his noblest
passages. But are we not saddening our-
selves, and learning to sadden others, if we
refuse to accept all the happiness offered
to man?

§ 59.

The humble thought that connects a
mere satisfied glance, an ordinary, everyday
act of simple kindness, or an insignificant
moment of happiness, with something
eternal, and stable, and beautiful, is of
far greater value, and infinitely nearer
to the mystery of life, than the grand
and gloomy meditation wherein  sor-
row, love, and despair blend with death
and destiny and the apathetic forces of

"35
Wisdom and Destiny

. nature. Appearances often deceive us.
Hamlet, bewailing his fate on the brink
of the gulf, seems profounder, imbued
with more passion, than Antoninus Pius,
whose tranquil gaze rests on the self-same
forces, but who accepts them and ques-
tions them calmly, instead of recoiling
in horror and calling down curses upon
them. Our slightest gesture at nightfall
seems more momentous by far than all
we have done in the day; but man was
created to work in the light, and not to
burrow in darkness.

§ 60.

The smallest consoling idea has a
strength of its own that is not to be
found in the most magnificent plaint, the
most exquisite expression of sorrow. The
vast, profound thought that brings with

it nothing but sadness is energy burning
156
Wisdom and Destiny

its wings in the darkness to throw light
on the walls of its prison; but the timidest
thought of hope, or of cheerful acceptance
of inevitable law, in itself already is action
in search of a foothold wherefrom to take
flight into life. It cannot be harmful for
us to acknowledge at times that action
begins with reality only, though our
thoughts be never so large and disin-
terested and admirable in themselves.
For all that goes to build up what is truly
our destiny is contained in those of our
thoughts which, hurried along by the mass
of ideas still obscure, indistinct, incom-
plete, have hadstrength sufficient—or been
forced, it may be — to turn into facts, into
gestures, into feelings and habits. We
do not imply by this that the other
thoughts should be neglected. Those
that surround our actual life may perhaps
be compared with an army besieging a
city. The city once taken, the bulk of
157
Wisdom and Destiny

the troops would probably not be per-
mitted to pass through the gates. Admis-
sion would be doubtless withheld from the
irregular part of the army — barbarians,
mercenaries, all those, in a word, whose
natural tendencies would lead them to
drunkenness, pillage, or bloodshed. And
it might also very well happen that fully
two-thirds of the troops would have
taken no part in the final decisive battle.
But there often is value in forces that
appear to be useless; and the city would
evidently not have yielded to panic and
thrown open her gates, had the well-dis-
ciplined force at the foot of the walls not
been flanked by the hordes in the valley.
So is it in moral life, too. Those
thoughts are not wholly vain that have
been unable to touch our actual life;
they have helped on, supported, the
others; yet is it these others alone that
have fully accomplished their mission.
158
Wisdom and Destiny

And therefore does it behove us to have
in our service, drawn up in front of
the crowded ranks of our sad and be-
wildered thoughts, a group of ideas more
human and confident, ready at all times
to penetrate vigorously into life.

§ 61.

Even when our endeavour to emerge
from reality is due to the purest desire
‘for immaterial good, one gesture must
still be worth more than a thousand in-
tentions; nor is this that intentions are
valueless, but that the least gesture of
goodness, or courage, or justice, makes

 

demands upon us far greater than a

AIM

“thousand lofty i intentions. Chiromantists
“pretend that ‘the whole of our life is
engraved on our palm; our life, accord-
ing to them, being a certain number
of actions which imprint ineffaceable

159

La MESE RAP ASIE H he an rat
Wisdom and Destiny

marks on our flesh, before or after
fulfilment; whereas not a trace will be
left by either thoughts or intentions.
If I have for many long days cherished
projects of murder or treachery, heroism
or sacrifice, my hand will tell nothing of
these; but if I have killed some one —
involuntarily perhaps, imagining he was
about to attack me; or if I have rescued
a child from the flames that enwrapped
it— my hand will bear, all my life, the
infallible sign of love or of murder.
Chiromancy may be delusion or not— it
matters but little; here we are concerned
with the great moral truth that underlies
this distinction. The place that I fill in
the universe will never be changed by
my thought; I shall be as I was to the
day of my death; but my actions will
: {almost invariably move me forwards or
backwards in the hierarchy of man.
Thought is a solitary, wandering, fugitive
160
Wisdom and Destiny

force, which advances towards us to-day
and perhaps on the morrow will vanish,
whereas every deed presupposes a per-
manent army of ideas and desires which
have, after lengthy effort, secured foot-
hold in reality.

§ 62.

But we find ourselves here far away
from the noble Antigone and the eternal
problem of unproductive virtue. It is
certain that destiny — understood in the
ordinary sense of the word as meaning
the road that leads only to death —is
wholly disregardful of virtue. This is
the gulf, to which all systems of morality
must come, as to a central reservoir, to be
purified or troubled for ever; and here
must each man decide whether he will
justify fate or condemn it. Antigone’s

sacrifice may well be regarded as the type
re] 161
Wisdom and Destiny

of all such as are made in the cause of
duty. Do we not all of us know of heroic
deeds whose reward has been only mis-
fortune? A friend of my own, one day,
as he lay on the bed he was never to leave
save for that other one only which is
eternal, pointed out to me, one after the
other, the different stratagems fate had
contrived to lure him to the distant city,
where the draught of poisonous water
awaited him that he was to swallow,
wherefrom he must die. Strangely clear
were the countless webs that destiny had
spun round this life; and the most trivial
event seemed endowed with marveilous
malice and forethought. Yet had my
friend journeyed forth to that city in
fulfilment of one of those duties that only
the saint, or the hero, the sage, detects on
the horizon of conscience. What can we
say? But let us leave this point for the

moment, to return to it later. My friend,
162
Wisdom and Destiny

had he lived, would on the morrow have
gone to another city, called thither by
another duty ; nor would he have paused
to inquire whether it was indeed duty that
summoned him. There are beings who
do thus obey the commands that their
heart whispets low. They fret not at
fortune’s injustice; they care not though
virtue be thankless; theirs it is only to
fight the injustice of men, which is the
only injustice whereof they, as yet, seem
aware.

Ought we never to hesitate, then? and
is our duty most faithfully done when we
ourselves are wholly unconscious that this
thing that we do is a duty? Is it most
essential of all that we should attain a
height whence duty no longer is looked
on as the choice of our noblest feelings,
but as the silent necessity of all the nature
within us ?

163
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 63.

There are some who wait and question
themselves, who ponder, consider, and
then at length decide. They too are
right, for it matters but little whether
the duty fulfilled be result of instinct
or intellect. The gestures of instinct
will often recall the delicate, naive and
vague, unexpected beauty that clings to
the child’s least movement, and touches
us deeply ; but the gestures of matured
resolve have a beauty, too, of their own,
more earnest and statelier, stronger. It is
given to very few hearts to be naively
perfect, nor should we go seek in them
for the laws of duty. And _ besides, there
is many a sober-hued duty that instinct
will fail to perceive, that yet will be
clearly espied by mature resolution, bereft

though this be of illusion; and man’s
164
Wisdom and Destiny

moral value is doubtless established by
the number of duties he sees and sets
forth to accomplish.

It is well that the bulk of mankind
should listen to the instinct that prompts
them to sacrifice self on the altar of
duty, and that without too close  self-
questioning; for long must the ques-
tioning be ere consciousness will give
forth the same answer as instinct. And
those who do thus close their eyes, and in
all meekness follow their instinct, are in
truth following the light that is borne at
their head, though they know it not, see
it not, by the best of their ancestors. But
still this is not the ideal; and he who
gives up the least thing of all for the
sake of his brother, well knowing what
it is he gives up and wherefore he does
it, stands higher by far in the scale of
morality than the other, who flings away
life without throwing one glance behind.

165
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 64.

In this world there are thousands of
weak, noble creatures who fancy that
sacrifice always must be the last word of
duty ; thousands of beautiful souls that
know not what should be done, and seek
only to yield up their life, holding that
to be virtue supreme. They are wrong;
supreme virtue consists in the knowledge
of what should be done, in the power to
decide for ourselves whereto we should
offer our life. The duty each holds to
be his is by no means his permanent
duty. The paramount duty of all is to
throw our conception of duty into clearest
possible light. The word duty itself will
often contain far more error and moral
indifference than virtue. Clytemnestra de-
voted her life to revenge— she murdered her

husband for that he had slain Iphigenia ;
166
Wisdom and Destiny

Orestes sacrificed his life in avenging Aga-
memnon’s death on Clytemnestra. And
yet it has only needed a sage to pass by,
saying, “ pardon your enemies,” for all
duties of vengeance to be banished for
ever from the conscience of man. And
so may it one day suffice that another
sage shall pass by for many a duty of
sacrifice too to be exiled. But in the
meanwhile there are certain ideas that
prevail on renouncement, resignation, _

 

 

erate scanninanaatita is

tive to the most beautiful moral forces
of man than great vices, or even than
crimes.

and sacrifice, that are far more re

§ 65.
There are some occasions in life, in-
evitable and of general bearing, that
demand resignation, which is necessary

then, and good; but there are many
167
Wisdom and Destiny

occasions when we sfill are able to fight;
and at such times resignation is no more
than veiled helplessness, idleness, ignorance.
So is it with sacrifice too, which indeed is
most often the withered arm resignation
still shakes in the void. There is beauty
in simple self-sacrifice when its hour has
come unsought, when its motive is happi-
ness of others; but it cannot be wise,
or of use to mankind, to make sacrifice
the aim of one’s life, or to regard its
achievement as the magnificent triumph
of the spirit over the body. (And here
let us add that infinitely too great import-
ance is generally ascribed to the triumph
of spirit over body, these pretended
triumphs being most often the total de-
feat of life.) Sacrifice may be a flower
that virtue will pluck on its road, but
it was not to gather this flower that
virtue set forth on its travels. It is a

grave error to think that the beauty of
168
Wisdom and Destiny

soul is most clearly revealed by the eager
desire for sacrifice ; 3_ for for | the soul’s fertile

AOD ERISA in tat

beauty resides in its consciousness, in the

 

 

elevation and power of its life. There are

 

some, it 1s true, that awake from their
sleep at the call of sacrifice only; but
these lack the strength and the courage
to seek other forms of moral existence.
lt is, as a rule, far easier to. sacrifice. _
~ self — to give up, that is, our moral exist-
“ence to the first one who chooses to
take it—than to fulfil our spiritual —
destiny, to accomplish, right, to the end,
~ the task for which we were created. It
“is” €asier far, as a rule, “to die “morally,
nay, even physically, for others, than to
learn how best we should live for them.
There are too many beings who thus lull
to sleep all initiative, personal life, and
absorb themselves wholly in the idea that
they are prepared and ready for sacrifice.

The consciousness that never succeeds in
169
Wisdom and Destiny

travelling beyond this idea, that is satisfied
ever to seek an occasion for giving all
that which it has, is a consciousness whose
eyes are sealed, and that crouches be-
numbed at the foot of the mountain.
There is beauty in the giving of self, and
indeed it is only by giving oneself that
we do, at the end, begin to possess our-
selves somewhat ; but if all that we some
day shall give to our brethren is the
desire to give them ourselves, then are
we surely preparing a gift of most slender
value. Before giving, let us try to ac-
quire ; for this last is a duty wherefrom
we are not relieved by the fact of our

x
’

| giving. Let us wait till the hour of
' sacrifice sounds; till then, each man to
i his work. The hour will sound at last;

but let us not waste all our time in
j seeking it on the dial of life.

170
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 66.

There are many ways of sacrifice; and
I speak not here of the self-sacrifice of
the strong, who know, as Antigone knew,
how to yield themselves up when destiny,
taking the form of their brothers’ mani-
fest happiness, calls upon them to abandon
their own happiness and their life. I speak
of the sacrifice here that is made by the
feeble ; that leans for support, with childish
content, on the staff of its own inanity —
that is as an old blind nurse, who would
rock us in the palsied arms of renounce-
ment and useless suffering. On this point
let us note what John Ruskin says, one
of the best thinkers of our time: “ The
will of God respecting us is that we shall
live by each other’s happiness and life;
not by each other’s misery or death. A
child may have to die for its parents; but

the purpose of Heaven is that it shall
171
Wisdom and Destiny

rather live for them; that not by sacri-
fice, but by its strength, its joy, its force
‘of being, it shall be to them renewal of
strength ; and as the arrow in the hand
of the giant. So it is in all other right
relations. Men help each other ver by their their

arenas eabtangin

| joy, not by their sorrow. “They are not
intended d to slay tl themselves for each other,
but to strengthen themselves for each
other. And among the many apparently
beautiful things which turn, through mis-
taken use, to utter evil, 1 am not sure
but that the thoughtlessly meek and self-
sacrificing spirit of good men must be
named as one of the fatallest. They have
so often been taught that there is a virtue
in mere suffering, as such . . . that they

| accept pain and defeat as if these were their
appointed portion; never understanding
that their defeat is not the less to be
mourned because it is more fatal to their
enemies than to them.”

192
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 67.

You are told you should love your
neighbour as yourself; but if you love
yourself meanly, childishly, timidly, even
so shall you love your neighbour. Learn
therefore to love yourself with a love that
is wise and healthy, that is large and com-
plete. This is less easy than it would
seem. There is more active charity in
the egoism of a strenuous clairvoyant soul
than in all the devotion of the soul that
is helpless and blind. Before you exist
for others it behoves you to exist for
' yourself; before giving, you first must i
acquire. Be sure that, if deeply con-
sidered, more value attaches to the particle
of consciousness gained than to the gift of
your entire unconsciousness. Nearly all
the great things of this world have been
done by men who concerned themselves

173
Wisdom and Destiny

not at all with ideas of self-sacrifice. Plato’s
thoughts flew on—he paused not to let
his tears fall with the tears of the
mourners in Athens; Newton pursued
his experiments calmly, nor left them to
search for objects of pity or sorrow; and
Marcus Aurelius above all (for here we
touch on the most frequent and dangerous
form of self-sacrifice) Marcus Aurelius
essayed not to dim the brightness of his
own soul that he might confer happiness
on the inferior soul of Faustina. And if
this was right in the lives of these men, of
Plato and Newton and Marcus Aurelius,
it is equally right in the life of every soul ;
for each soul has, in its sphere, the same
obligations to ‘self as the soul of the
(greatest. We should tell ourselves, once
{nd for all, that it is the first duty of the
soul to become as happy, complete, inde-

endent, and great as lies in its power.

erein is no egoism, or pride. To

174
Wisdom and Destiny

become effectually generous and sincerely
humble there must be within us a confi-
dent, tranquil, and clear comprehension
of all that we owe to ourselves. To this
end we may sacrifice even the passion for
sacrifice ; for sacrifice never should be the
means of ennoblement, but only the sign
of our being ennobled.

§ 68.

Let us be ready to offer, when neces-
sity beckons, our wealth, and our time,
and our life, to our less fortunate brethren,
making them thus an exceptional gift of
a few exceptional hours; but the sage is
not bound to neglect his happiness, and
all that environs his life, in sole prepara-
tion for these few exceptional hours of
greater or lesser devotion. The truest
morality tells us to cling, above all, to
the duties that return every day, to acts

175
Wisdom and Destiny

of inexhaustible brotherly kindness. And,
thus considered, we find that in the every-
day walk of life the solitary thing we can
ever distribute among those who march
by our side, be they joyful or sad, is the
confidence, strength, the freedom and
peace, of our soul. Let the humblest of
men, therefore, never cease to cherish and
lift up his soul, even as though he were
fully convinced that this soul of his should
one day be called to console or gladden
a God. When we think of preparing
our soul, the preparation should never
be other than befits a mission divine. In
this domain only, and on this condition,
can man truly give himself, can there
be pre-eminent sacrifice. And think you
that when the hour sounds the gift of a
Socrates or Marcus Aurelius — who lived
many lives, for many a time had they
compassed their whole life around—do
you think such a gift is not worth a
176
Wisdom and Destiny

thousand times more than what would be
given by him who had never stepped over
the threshold of consciousness? And if
God there be, will He value sacrifice only
by the weight of the blood in our body;
and the blood of the heart—its virtue,
its knowledge of self, its moral exist-
ence—do you think this will all go for
nothing?

§ 69.

It is not by self-sacrifice that loftiness
comes to the soul; but as the soul be-
comes loftier, sacrifice fades out of sight,
as the flowers in the valley disappear
from the vision of him who toils up
the mountain. Sacrifice is a beautiful
token of unrest; but unrest should not
be nurtured within us for sake of it-
self. To the soul that is slowly awaken-
ing all appears sacrifice; but few things

12 ss 77
Wisdom and Destiny

indeed are so called by the sou] that
at last lives the life whereof self-denial,
pity, devotion, are no longer indispensable
roots, but only invisible flowers. For in
truth too many do thus feel the need
of destroying — though it be without
cause —a happiness, love, or a hope that
is theirs, thereby to obtain clearer vision of
self in the light of the consuming flame.
It is as though they held in their hand a
lamp of whose use they know nothing;
as though, when the darkness comes on,
and they are eager for light, they scatter
its substance abroad on the fire of the
stranger.

Let us beware lest we act as he did in
the fable, who stood watch in the light-
house, and gave to the poor in the cabins
about him the oil of the mighty lanterns
that served to illumine the sea. Every
soul in its sphere has charge of a light-
house, for which there is more or less

178
Wisdom and Destiny

need. The humblest mother who allows
her whole life to be crushed, to be sad-
dened, absorbed, by the less important of
her motherly duties, is giving her oil to
the poor; and her children will suffer,
the whole of their life, from there not
having been, in the soul of their mother,
the radiance it might have acquired. The
immaterial force that shines in our heart:

‘
r

must shine, first of all, for itself; for on;
this condition alone shall it shine for the!
others as well; but see that you give not | Y-
away the oil of your lamp, though your
lamp be never so small; let your gift be

the flame, its crown.

§ 70.

In the soul that is noble altruism must, \
without doubt, be always the centre of \
gravity ; but the weak soul is apt to lose
itself in others, whereas it is in others

179
Wisdom and Destiny

that the strong soul discovers itself. Here
we have the essential distinction. There
is a-thing that is loftier still than to love
our neighbour as we love ourselves; it
is to love ourselves in our neighbour.
Some souls there are whom goodness
walks before, as there are others that
goodness follows. Let us never forget
that, in communion of soul, the most
generous by no means are they who be-
lieve they are constantly giving. A
strenuous soul never ceases to take,
though it be from the poorest; a weak
soul always is giving, even to those that
have most; but there is a manner of
giving which truly is only the gesture of
powerless greed; and we should find, it
may be, if reckoning were kept by a God,
that in taking from others we give, and
in giving we take away. Often indeed
will it so come about that the very first

ray of enlightenment will descend on the
180
Wisdom and Destiny

commonplace soul the day it has met
with another which took all that it had
to give.

§ 71.

Why not admit that it is not our para-
mount duty to weep with all those who
are weeping, to suffer with all who are
sad, to expose our heart to the passer-by
for him to caress or stab? Tears and.
suffering and wounds are helpful to us
only when they do not discourage our
life. Let us never forget that whatever
our mission may be in this world, what-
ever the aim of our efforts and hopes,
and the result of our joys and our
sorrows, we are, above all, the blind
custodians of life. Absolutely, wholly
certain is that one thing only; it is there
that we find the only fixed point of human
morality. Life has been given us —for a

reason we know not — but surely not for
181
Wisdom and Destiny

us to enfeeble it, or carelessly fling it
away. For it is a particular form of life
that we represent on this planet — the life
of feeling and thought; whence it follows
perhaps that all that inclines to weaken
the ardour of feeling and thought is, in
its essence, immoral. Our task let it be
then to foster this ardour, to enhance and
embellish it; let us constantly strive to
acquire deeper faith in the greatness of
man, in his strength and his destiny;
or, we might equally say, in his bitter-
ness, weakness, and wretchedness ; for to
be loftily wretched is no less soul-quicken-
ing than it is to be loftily happy. After
all, it matters but little whether it be
man or the universe that we admire, so
long as something appear truly admirable
to us, and exalt our sense of the infinite.
Every new star that is found in the
sky will lend of its rays to the passions,

and thoughts, and the courage, of man.
182
Wisdom and Destiny

Whatever of beauty we see in all that
surrounds us, within us already is beauti-
ful; whatever we find in ourselves that
is great and adorable, that do we find
too in others. If my soul, on awaking
this morning, was cheered, as it dwelt on
its love, by a thought that drew near toa
God — a God, we have said, who is doubt-
less no more than the loveliest desire of
our soul —then shall I behold this same
thought astir in the beggar who passes
my window the moment thereafter; and
I shall love him the more for that I
understand him the better. And let us
not think that love of this kind can be
useless; for indeed, if one day we shall
know the thing that has to be done, it
will only be thanks to the few who love
in this fashion, with an ever-deepening
love. From the conscious and _ infinite
love must the true morality spring, nor |

can there be greater charity than the
183
Wisdom and Destiny

effort to ennoble our fellows. But I[
cannot ennoble you if I have not become
noble myself; I have no admiration to
give you if there be naught in myself I
admire. If the deed I have done be
heroic, its truest reward will be my con-
viction that of an equal deed you are
capable too ; this conviction ever will tend
to become more spontaneous within me,
and more unconquerable. Every thought
that quickens my heart brings quickening,
too, to the love and respect that I have
for mankind. As I rise aloft, you rise
with me. But if, the better to love
you, I deem it my duty to tear off the
wings from my love, your love being
wingless as yet; then shall I have added
in vain to the plaints and the tears in the
valley, but brought my own love thereby
not one whit nearer the mountain. Our
love should. always be lodged on the

highest peak we can attain. Let our
184
Wisdom and Destiny

love not spring from pity when it can
be born of love; let us not forgive for
-charity’s sake when justice offers forgive-
ness ; nor let us try to console there where
we can respect. Let our one never-ceasing
care be to better the love that we offer
our fellows. One cup of this love that
is drawn from the spring on the mountain
is worth a hundred taken from the stag-
nant well of ordinary charity. And if
there be one whom you no longer can
love because of the pity you feel, or the
tears that he sheds; and if he ignore to
the end that you love him because you
ennobled him at the same time you en-
nobled yourself, it matters but little after
all; for you have done what you held
to be best, and the best is not always
most useful. Should we not invariably
act in this life as though the God whom
our heart desires with its highest desire

were watching our every action?
185
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 72.

In a terrible catastrophe that took place
but a short time ago,* destiny afforded
yet another, and perhaps the most startling
instance of what it pleases men to term
her injustice, her blindness, or her irre-
sponsibility. She seemed to have singled
out for especial chastisement the solitary
external virtue that reason has left us—
our love for our fellow-man. There must
have been some moderately righteous men
amongst the victims, and it seems almost
certain that there was at least one whose
virtue was wholly disinterested and sincere.
It is the presence of this one truly good
man that warrants our asking, in all its
simplicity, the terrible question that rises
to our lips. Had he not been there we
might have tried to believe that this act

* The fire at the Bazar de Ja Charité in Paris.
186
Wisdom and Destiny

of seemingly monstrous injustice was in
reality composed of particles of sovereign
justice. We might have whispered to
ourselves that what they termed charity,
out yonder, was perhaps only the arrogant
flower of permanent injustice.

We seem unwilling to recognise the
blindness of the external forces, such as air,
fire, water, the laws of gravity and others,
with which we must deal and do battle.
_The need is heavy upon us to find excuses _
for fate; and even when blaming her, we :
feat te endeavouring still to explain the
causes of her past and her future action,

 

conscious the while of a feeling of pained
surprise, as though a man we valued highly
had done some dreadful deed. We love
to idealise destiny, and are wont to credit
her with a sense of justice loftier far than
our own ; and however great the injustice
whereof she may have been guilty, our

confidence will soon flow back to her, the
187
Wisdom and Destiny

first feeling of dismay over; for in our
heart we plead that she must have reasons
we cannot fathom, that there must be laws
we cannot divine. The gloom of the
world would crush us were we to dissociate
morality from fate. To doubt the exist-
ence of this high, protecting justice and
virtue, would seem-to us to be denying
the existence of all justice and ofall virtue.

We are no longer able to accept the
narrow morality of positive religion, which
entices with reward and threatens with
punishment; and yet we are apt to forget
that, were fate possessed of the most
rudimentary sense of justice, our concep-
tion of a lofty, disinterested morality
would fade.into thin air, What merit
in being just ourselves if we be not con-
vinced of the absolute injustice of fate?
We no longer believe in the ideals once
held by saints, and we are confident that

a wise God will hold of as little account
188
Wisdom and Destiny

the duty done through hope of recom-
pense, as the evil done for sake of gain;
and this even though the recompense
hoped for be nothing but the self-ensuing
peace of mind. We say that God, who
must be at least as high as the highest
thoughts He has implanted in the best of
men, will withhold His smile from those
who have desired but to please Him ; and
that they only who have done good for
the sake of good and as though He existed
not, they only who have loved virtue
more than they loved God Himself, shall
be allowed to stand by His side. And
yet, and for all this, no sooner does the
event confront us, than we discover that
we still are guided by the “ moral maxims”
of our childhood. Of more avail would
be a “List of chastised virtues.” The
soul that is quick with life would find its
profit therein; the cause of virtue would

gain in vigour and in majesty. Let us
189 .
Wisdom and Destiny

not forget that it is from the very non-
morality of destiny that a nobler morality
must spring into life; for here, as every-
where, man is never so strong with his _

own 1 native | ve. ve strength as v when he realises
that he stands entirely alone. As we
“consider the crowning “injustice of fate, it

is the negation of high moral law that
disturbs us ; but from this negation there

at once arises a moral law that is higher
still. He who no longer _ believes in

reward or ' punishment must do good for
the sake of good. good. Even though a moral
law seem on the eve of disappearing, we
need have no cause for disquiet; its place
will be speedily filled by a law that is
greater still. To attribute morality to
fate is but to lessen the purity of our
ideal ; to admit the injustice of fate is to
throw open before us the ever-widening
fields of a still loftier morality. Let us
not think virtue will crumble, though God
190°
Wisdom and Destiny

Himself seem unjust. Where shall the
virtue of man find more everlasting founda-
tion than in the seeming injustice of God?

§ 73-

Let us not cavil, therefore, at nature’s
indifference to the sage. _Itis only because _
we are not yet wise enough that this in-

“difference seems strange ; for the first duty
of wisdom is to throw into light the
humbleness of the place in the universe
that is filled by man.

Within his sphere he seems of import-
ance, as the bee in its cell of honey; but
it were idle to suppose that a single
flower the more will blossom in the fields
because the queen bee has proved herself
a heroine in the hive. We need not fear ,
that we depreciate ourselves when we extol
the universe. Whether it be ourselves or
the entire world that we consider great,

Igt

 

 
Wisdom and Destiny

still will there quicken within our soul
the sense of the infinite, which is of the
life-blood of virtue. What is an act of
virtue that we should expect such mighty
reward? It is within ourselves that reward
must be found, for the law of gravitation
will not swerve. They only who know
not what goodness is are ever clamouring
for the wage of goodness. Above all, let
us never forget that an act of goodness is

 

 

of itself always an act of happiness. _ It is

 

the flower of a long inner life of joy and
contentment ; it tells of peaceful hours
and days on the sunniest heights of our
soul. No reward coming after the event
can compare with the sweet reward that
went with it. The upright man who

erished in the catastrophe I mentioned
was there because his soul had found a
peace and strength in virtue that not
happiness, love, or glory could have

given him. Were the flames to retreat
192
Wisdom and Destiny

before such men, were the waters to open
and death to hesitate, what were righteous-
ness or heroism then? Would not the
true happiness of virtue be destroyed?
virtue that is happy because it is noble
and pure, that is noble and pure because
it desires no reward? There may be
human joy in doing good with definite
purpose, but they who do good expecting.
nothing in return know a joy that is
divine. Where we do evil our reasons
mostly are known to us, but our good
deed becomes the purer for our ignorance
of its motive. Would we know how to
value the righteous man, we have but to
question him as to the motives of his
righteousness. He will probably be the
most truly righteous whois least teady with”

ANN UT ee

““his answer, Some may suppose that as in-
“galsee widens many a motive for heroism
will be lost to the soul; but it should be
borne in mind that the wider intellect {
13 193
Wisdom and Destiny

brings with it an ideal of heroism Joftier
and more disinterested still. / And this
much at least is certain: he who thinks
that virtue stands in need of the approval
of destiny or of worlds, has not yet within
him the veritable sense of virtue. Truly
to act well we must do good because of
our craving for good, a more intimate
knowledge of goodness being all we ex-
pect inreturn. ‘ With no witness save his
heart alone,” said St. Just. In the eyes
of a God there must surely be marked
distinction between the soul of the man
who believes that the rays of a virtuous
deed shall shine through furthest space,
and the soul of the other who knows they
illumine his heart alone. There may be
greater momentary strength in the over-
ambitious truth, but the strength that is
brought by the humble human truth is far
more earnest and patient. Is it wiser to be
as the soldier who imagines that each blow
194
Wisdom and Destiny

he strikes brings victory nearer, or as the
other who knows his little account in the
combat but still fights sturdily on? The
upright man would scorn to deceive his
neighbour, but is ever unduly inclined to
regard some measure of self-deception as
inseparable from his ideal.

If there were profit in virtue, then would
the noblest of men be compelled to seek
happiness elsewhere; and God would
destroy their main object in life were He
to reward them often. Nothing is in-
dispensable, perhaps, or even necessary ;
and it may be that if the joy of doing
good for sake of good were taken from
the soul, it would find other, purer joys ;
but in the meantime, it is the most beau-
tiful joy we know, therefore let us respect
it. Let us not resent the misfortunes
that sometimes befall virtue, lest we at
the same time disturb the limpid essence
of its happiness. The soul that has this

195
a

Wisdom and Destiny

happiness dreams no more of reward, than
others expect punishment because of their
wickedness. They only are ever clamour-

‘ing for justice who know it not in their

lives.

§ 74.

There is wisdom in the Hindu saying :
“© Work as they work, who are ambitious.
Respect life, as they respect it who desire
it. Be happy, as they are happy who
live for happiness alone.”

And this is indeed the central point of

human wisdom — to act as though each

deed must bear wondrous, everlasting
fruit, and yet to realise the insignificance
of a just action before the universe; to
grasp the disproportion of things, and yet
to march onwards as though the propor-
tions were established by man; to keep

our eyes fixed on the great sphere, and
196
Wisdom and Destiny

ourselves to move in the little sphere with
as much confidence and earnestness, with
as much assurance and satisfaction, as
though the great sphere were contained
within it.

Is there need of illusion to keep alive
our desire for good? then must this
desire stand confessed as foreign to the
nature of man. It is a mistake to imagine .
that the heart will long cherish within it
the ideas that reason has banished; but
within the heart there is much that reason
may take to itself. And at last the heart
becomes the refuge to which reason is
apt to fly, ever more and more simply,
each time that the night steals upon it;
for it is to the heart as a young, clair-
voyant girl, who still at times needs
advice from her blind, but smiling, mother.
There comes a moment in life when moral
beauty seems more urgent, more penetrat-
ing, than intellectual beauty; when all

197
Wisdom and Destiny

that the mind has treasured must be
bathed in the greatness of soul, lest it
perish in the sandy desert, forlorn as a
river that seeks in vain for the sea.

§ 75.

But let us exaggerate nothing when
dealing with wisdom, though it be wisdom
itself. The external forces, we know, will
not yield to the righteous man ; but still
he is absolute lord of most of the inner
powers; and these are for ever spinning
the web of nearly all our happiness and
sorrow. We have said elsewhere that the
sage, as he passes by, intervenes in count-
less dramas. Indeed his mere presence
suffices to arrest most of the calamities
that arise from error or evil. They can-
not approach him, or even those who are
near him. A chance meeting with a

creature endowed with simple and loving
198
Wisdom and Destiny

wisdom has stayed the hands of men who
else had committed countless acts of folly
or wickedness ; for in life most characters
are subordinate, and it is chance alone that
determines whether the track which they
are to follow shall be that of suffering
or peace. The atmosphere around Jean-
Jacques Rousseau was heavy with lamen-
tation and treachery, delirium, deceit, and
cunning; whereas Jean Paul moved in
the midst of loyalty and nobility, the
centre of peace and love. We subdue
that in others which we have learned to
subdue in ourselves. Around the upright
man there is drawn a wide circle of peace,
within which the arrows of evil soon
cease to fall; nor have his fellows the
power to inflict moral suffering upon him.
For indeed if our tears can flow because
of our enemies’ malice, it is only because
we ourselves would fain make our enemies
weep. If the shafts of envy can wound
199
Wisdom and Destiny

and draw blood, it is only because we
ourselves have shafts that we wish to
throw; if treachery can wring a groan
from us, we must be disloyal ourselves.
Only those weapons can wound the soul
that it has not yet sacrificed on the altar
of Love.

§ 76.

The dramas of virtue are played on a
stage whose mysteries not even the wisest
can fathom. It is only as the last word
is spoken that the curtain is raised for
an instant; we know nothing of all that
preceded, of the brightness or gloom
that enwrapped it. But of one thing
at least the just man may be certain; it
will be in an act of charity, or justice,
that his destiny will meet him face to
face. The blow must inevitably find him

prepared, in a state of grace, as the
200
Wisdom and Destiny

Christian calls it; in other words, in a
state of inner happiness. And that in
itself bars the door on evil destiny within
us, and closes most of the gates by which
external misfortune can enter. As our
conception of duty and happiness gains
in dignity, so does the sway of moral
suffering become the more restricted and
purer. And is not moral suffering the
most tyrannical weapon in the armoury of
destiny? Our happiness mainly depends
on the freedom that reigns within us;
a freedom that widens with every good
deed, and contracts beneath acts of evil.
Not metaphorically, but literally, does
Marcus Aurelius free himself each time
he discovers a new truth in indulgence,
each time that he pardons, each time he
reflects. Still less of a metaphor is it.
to declare that Macbeth enchains himself
anew with every fresh crime. And if this

be true of the great crimes of kings and
201
Wisdom and Destiny

the virtues of heroes, it is no less true
of the humblest faults and most hidden
virtues of ordinary life. Many a youthful
Marcus Aurelius is still about us; many
a Macbeth, who never stirs from his
room. However impertect our concep-
tion of virtue, still let us cling to it;
for a moment’s forgetfulness exposes us
to all the malignant forces from without.
The simplest lie to myself, buried though
it may be in the silence of my soul, may
yet be as dangerous to my inner liberty
as an act of treachery on the market-
place. And from the moment that my
inner liberty is threatened, destiny prowls
around my external liberty as stealthily as
a beast of prey that has long been tracking
its victim.

$77.

Can we conceive a situation in life

wherein a man who is truly wise and
202
Wisdom and Destiny

noble can be made to suffer as profoundly
as the man who follows evil? In this
world it is far more certain that vice
will be punished, than that virtue will
meet with reward; yet we must bear in
mind that it is the habit of crime to
shriek aloud beneath its punishment,
whereas virtue rewards itself in the silence
that is the walled garden of its happiness.
Evil drags horrid catastrophe behind it;
but an act of virtue is only a silent offer-
ing to the profoundest laws of life; and
therefore, doubtless, does the balance of
mighty justice seem more ready to incline
beneath deeds of darkness than beneath
those of light. But if we can scarcely
believe that “happiness in crime” be
possible, have we more warrant for faith
in the “unhappiness of virtue”? We
know that the executioner can stretch
Spinoza on the rack, and that terrible

disease will spare Antoninus Pius no more
203
Wisdom and Destiny

than Goneril or Regan; but pain such
as this belongs to the animal, not the
human, side of man. Wisdom has indeed
sent science, the youngest of her sisters,
into the realm of destiny, with the mission
to bring the zone of physical suffering
within ever-narrowing limits ; but there are
inaccessible regions within that realm,
where disaster ever will rule. Some
stricken ones there will always be, victims
to irreducible injustice; and yet will the
true wisdom, in the midst of its sorrow,
only be fortified thereby, only gain in
self-reliance and humanity all that it
may lose in more mystic qualities. We
become truly just only when it is finally
borne home to us that we must search
within ourselves for our model of justice.
Again, it is the injustice of destiny that
restores man to his place in the universe.
It is not well that he should for ever be

casting anxious glances about him, like the
204
Wisdom and Destiny

child that has strayed from its mother’s
side. Nor need we believe that these
disillusions must necessarily give rise to
moral discouragement ; for the truth that
seems discouraging does in reality only
transform the courage of those strong
enough to accept it; and, in any event, a
truth that disheartens, because it is true,
is still of far more value than the most
stimulating of falsehoods. But indeed no
truth can discourage, whereas much that
passes as courage only bears the semblance
‘thereof. The thing that enfeebles the
weak will but help to strengthen the
strong. “Do you remember the day,”
wrote a woman to her lover, “when we
sat together by the window that looked
on to the sea, and watched the meek
procession of white-sailed ships as they
followed each other into harbour? ...
Ah! how that day comes back to me!
. » » Do you remember that one ship had
205
Wisdom and Destiny

a sail that was nearly black, and that she
was the last to come in? And do you
remember, too, that the hour of separation
was upon us, and that the arrival of the
last boat of all was to be our signal for
departure? We might perhaps have found
cause for sadness in the gloomy sail that
fluttered at her mast; but we who loved
each other had ‘accepted’ life, and we
only smiled as we once more recognised
the kinship of our thoughts.” Yes, it is.
thus we should act; and though we cannot:
always smile as the black sail heaves in|
sight, yet is it possible for us to find in our :
life something that shall absorb us to the!
exclusion of sadness, as her love absorbed}
the woman whose words I have quoted.
Complaints of injustice grow less frequent
as the brain and the heart expand. It is
well to remind ourselves that in this world,
whose fruit we are, all that concerns us

must necessarily be more conformable with
206
Wisdom and Destiny

our existence than the most beneficent law
of our imagination. The time has arrived
perhaps when man must learn to place the
centre of his joys and pride elsewhere than
within himself. As this idea takes firmer
root within us, so do we become more
conscious of our helplessness beneath its
overwhelming force; yet is it at the same
time borne home to us that of this force
we ourselves form part; and even as we
writhe beneath it, we are compelled to
admire, as the youthful Telemachus ad-
mired the power of his father’s arm. Our
own instinctive actions awaken within us
an eager curiosity, an affectionate, pleased
surprise: why should we not train our-
selves thus to regard the instinctive actions
of nature? We love to throw the dim
light of our reason on to our unconscious-
ness: why not let it play on what we term
the unconsciousness of the universe? We

are no less deeply concerned with the one
207
Wisdom and Destiny

than the other. “After he has become
acquainted with the power that is in him,”
said a philosopher, “one of the highest
privileges of man is to realise his individual
powerlessness. Out of the very dispropor-
tion between the infinite which kills us and
this nothing that we are, there arises within
us a sensation that is not without grandeur;
we feel that we would rather be crushed
by a mountain than done to death by a
pebble, as in war we would rather succumb
beneath the charge of thousands than fall
victim toa single arm. And as our intel-
lect lays bare to us the immensity of our
helplessness, so does it rob defeat of its
sting.” Who knows? We are already
conscious of moments when the something
that has conquered us seems nearer to
ourselves than the part of us that has
yielded. Of all our characteristics, self-
esteem is the one that most readily changes

its home, for we are instinctively aware
208
Wisdom and Destiny

that it has never truly formed part of us.
The self-esteem of the courtier who waits
on the mighty king soon finds more
splendid lodging in the king’s boundless
power; and the disgrace that may befall
him will wound his pride the less for that
it has ‘descended from the height of a
throne. Were nature to become less in-
different, it would no longer appear so
vast. Our unfettered sense of the infinite
cannot afford to dispense with one particle
of the infinite, with one particle of its
indifference; and there will ever remain
something within our soul that would
rather weep at times in a world that knows
no limit, than enjoy perpetual happiness
in a world that is hemmed in.

If destiny were invariably just in her
dealings with the wise, then doubtless
would the existence of such a law furnish
sufficient proof of its excellence; but as
it is wholly indifferent, it is better so, and

14 209
Wisdom and Destiny

perhaps even greater; for what the actions
of the soul may lose in importance thereby
does but go to swell the dignity of the
universe. And loss of grandeur to the
sage there is none; for he is as profoundly
sensitive to the greatness of nature as to
the greatness that lurks within man. Why
harass our soul with endeavour to locate
the infinite? As much of it as can be
given to man will go to him who has
learned to wonder.

§ 78.

Do you know a novel of Balzac, belong-
ing ‘to the “Ceélibataires” series, called
Pierrette? It is not one of Balzac’s
masterpieces, but it has points of much
interest for us. It is the story of an
orphaned Breton girl, a sweet, innocent
child, who is suddenly snatched away, by

her evil star, from the grandparents who
° 210
Wisdom and Destiny

adore her, and transferred to the care of
an aunt and uncle, Monsieur Rogron and
his sister Sylvia. A hard, gloomy couple,
these two; retired shopkeepers, who live
in a dreary house in the back streets of
a dreary country town. Their celibacy
weighs heavily upon them; they are
miserly, and absurdly vain; morose, and
instinctively full of hatred.

The poor inoffensive girl has hardly set
foot in the house before her martyrdom
begins. There are terrible questions of
money and economy, ambitions to be
gratified, marriages to be prevented, in-
heritances to be turned aside: complica-
tions of every kind. The neighbours and
friends of the Rogrons behold the long
and painful sufferings of the victim with
unruffed tranquillity, for their every
natural instinct leads them to applaud
the success of the stronger. And at last
Pierrette dies, as unhappily as she has

2II
Wisdom and Destiny

lived ; while the others all triumph — the
Rogrons, the detestable lawyer Vinet, and
all those who had helped them; and the
subsequent happiness of these wretches
remains wholly untroubled. Fate would
even seem to smile upon them; and
Balzac, carried away in spite of himself by
the reality of it all, ends his story, almost
regretfully, with these words: “ How the
social villainies of this world would thrive
under our laws if there were no God!”
We need not go to fiction for tragedies
of this kind; there are many houses in
which they are matters of daily occur-
rence. I have borrowed this instance from
Balzac’s pages because the story lay there
ready to hand; the chronicle, day by day,
of the triumph of injustice. The very
highest morality is served by such in-
stances, and a great lesson is taught;
and perhaps the moralists are wrong who

try to weaken this lesson by finding
212
Wisdom and Destiny

excuses for the iniquities of fate. Some
are satisfied that God will give innocence
its due reward. Others tell us that in
this case it is not the victim who has the
greatest claim upon our sympathy. And
these are doubtless right, from many
points of view; for little Pierrette, miser-
able though she was, and cruelly tor-
mented, did yet experience joys that her
tyrants never would know. In the midst
of her sorrow, she remained gentle, and
tender, and loving; and therein lies
greater happiness than in hiding cruelty,
hatred, and selfishness beneath a smile.
It is sad to love and be unloved, but
sadder still to be unable to love. And
how great is the difference between the
petty, sordid desires, the grotesque de-
lights, of the Rogrons, and the mighty
longing that filled the child’s soul as
she looked forward to the time when
injustice at last should cease! Little
213
Wisdom and Destiny

wistful Pierrette was perhaps no wiser
than those about her; but before such
as must bear unmerited suffering there
stretches a wide horizon, which here and
again takes in the joys that only the
loftiest know; even as the horizon of
the earth, though not seen from the
mountain peak, would appear at times
to be one with the corner-stone of heaven.
The injustice we commit speedily re-
duces us to petty, material pleasures ;
but, as we revel in these, we envy our
victim; for our tyranny has thrown
open the door to joys whereof we cannot
deprive him—joys that are wholly be-
yond our reach, joys that are purely
spiritual. And the door that opens wide
to the victim is sealed in the tyrant’s
soul; and the sufferer breathes a purer
air than he who has made him suffer. In
the hearts of the persecuted there is

radiance, where those who persecute have
214
Wisdom and Destiny

only gloom ; and is it not on the light
within us that the wellbeing of happiness
depends? He who brings sorrow with
him stifles more happiness within himself
than in the man he overwhelms. Which
of us, had he to choose, but would rather
be Pierrette than Rogron? The instinct
of happiness within us needs no telling
that he who is morally right must be
iappier than he who is wrong, though
the wrong be done from the height of
a throne. And, even though the Rogrons
be unaware of their injustice, it alters
nothing; for, be we aware or unaware of
the evil we commit, the air we breathe
will still be heavily charged. Nay, more—
to him who knows he does wrong there
may come, perhaps, the desire to escape
from his prison; but the other will die in
his cell, without even his thoughts having
travelled beyond the gloomy walls that
conceal from him the true destiny of man.
21g
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 79.

Why seek justice where it cannot be?
and where can it be, save in our soul?
Its language is the natural language of
the spirit of man; but this spirit must
learn new words ere it can travel in the
universe. Justice is the very last thing
of all wherewith the universe concerns
itself. It is equilibrium that absorbs its
attention; and what we term justice is
truly nothing but this equilibrium trans-
formed, as honey is nothing but a trans-
formation of the sweetness found in the
flower. Outside man there is no justice ;
within him injustice cannot be. The
body may revel in ill-gotten pleasure,
but virtue alone can bring contentment
to the soul. Our inner happiness is
measured out to us by an incorruptible

judge: and the mere endeavour to corrupt
216
Wisdom and Destiny

him still further reduces the sum of the
final, veritable happiness he lets fall into
the shining scale. It is lamentable enough
that a Rogron should be able to torture
a helpless child, and darken the few hours
of life the chance of the world had given;
but injustice there would be only if his
wickedness procured him the inner happi-
ness and peace, the elevation of thought
and habit, that long years spent in love
and meditation had procured for Spinoza
and Marcus Aurelius. Some slight in-
tellectual satisfaction there may be in the
doing of evil; but none the less does each
wrongful deed clip the wings of our
thoughts, till at length they can only
crawl amidst all that is fleeting and per-
sonal. To commit an act of injustice is
to prove we have not yet attained the
happiness within our grasp. And in evil
—reduce things to their primal elements,

and you shall find that even the wicked
217
Wisdom and Destiny

are seeking some measure of peace, a
certain up-lifting of soul. They may
think themselves happy, and rejoice for
such dole as may come to them; but
would it have satisfied Marcus Aurelius,
who knew the lofty tranquillity, the great
quickening of the soul? Show a vast
lake to the child who has never beheld
the sea, it will clap its hands and be glad,
and think the sea is before it; but there-
fore none the less does the veritable sea
exist.

It may be that a man will find happi-
ness in the puny little victories that his
vanity, envy, or indifference win for him
day after day. Shall we begrudge him
such happiness, we, whose eyes can see
further? Shall we strive for his con-
sciousness of life, for the religion that
pleases his soul, for the conception of
the universe that justifies his cares? Yet

out of these things are the banks made
218
Wisdom and Destiny

between which happiness flows ; and as they
are, so shall the river be, in shallowness
or in depth. He may believe that there
is a God, or that there is no God; that
all ends in this world, or that it is pro-
longed into the next; that all is matter,
or that all is spirit. He will believe these
things much as wise men believe them;
but do you think his manner of belief
can be the same? To look fearlessly
upon life; to accept the laws of nature,
not with meek resignation, but as her
sons, who dare to search and question;
to have peace and confidence within our
soul —these are the beliefs that make for
happiness. But to believe is not enough;
all depends on how we believe. I may
believe that there is no God, that I am
self-contained, that my brief sojourn here
serves no purpose; that in the economy
of this world without limit my existence
counts for as little as the evanescent hue
219
Wisdom and Destiny

of a flower —I may believe all this, in a
deeply religious spirit, with the infinite
throbbing within me; you may believe
in one all-powerful God, who cherishes
and protects you, yet your belief may
be mean, and petty, and small. I shall
be happier than you, and calmer, if my
doubt is greater, and nobler, and more
earnest than is your faith; if it has
probed more deeply into my soul, traversed
wider horizons, if there are more things
it has loved. And if the thoughts and
feelings on which my doubt reposes have
- become vaster and purer than those that
support your faith, then shall the God
of my disbelief become mightier and of
supremer comfort than the God to whom
youcling. For, indeed, belief and unbelief
are mere empty words; notso the loyalty,
the greatness and profoundness of the
reasons wherefore we believe or do not
believe.
220
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 80.

We do not choose these reasons; they
are rewards that have to be earned.
Those we have chosen are only slaves we
have happened to buy; and their life is
but feeble; they hold themselves shyly
aloof, ever watching for a chance to
escape. But the reasons we have deserved
stand faithfully by us; they are so many
pensive Antigones, on whose help we may
ever rely. Nor can such reasons as these
be forcibly lodged in the soul; for in-
deed they must have dwelt there from
earliest days, have spent their childhood
there, nourished on our every thought
and action; and tokens recalling a life of
devotion and love must surround:them on
every side. And as they throw deeper
root —as the mists clear away from our

soul and reveal a still wider horizon,
22tr
Wisdom and Destiny

so does the horizon of happiness widen
also; for it is only in the space that our
thoughts and our feelings enclose that our
happiness can breathe in freedom. It de-
mands no material space, but finds ever
too narrow the spiritual fields we throw
open; wherefore we must unceasingly
endeavour to enlarge its territory, until
such time as, soaring up on high, it finds
sufficient aliment in the space which it
does of itself fling open. Then it is, and
then only, that happiness truly illumines
the most eternal, most human part of
man; and indeed all other forms of
happiness are merely unconscious frag-
ments of this great happiness, which, as it
reflects and looks before it, is conscious
of no limit within itself or in all that
surrounds it.
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 81.

Lhis space must dwindle daily in those
who follow evil, seeing that their thoughts
and feelings must of necessity dwindle
also. But the man who has risen some-
what will soon forsake the ways of evil;
for look deep down enough and you shall
over find its origin in straitened feeling
nd stunted thought. He does evil no
longer, because his thoughts are purer and
higher; and now that he is incapable of
evil, his thoughts will become purer still.
And thus do our thoughts and actions,
having won their way into the placid
heaven where no barrier restrains the soul,

zcome as inseparable as the wings of a
wird; and what to the bird was only a
law of equilibrium is here transformed
into a law of justice.

222
“
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 82.

Who can tell whether the satisfaction
derived from evil can ever penetrate to
the soul, unless there mingle with it a
vague desire, a promise, a distant hope,
of goodness or of pity?

The joy of the wretch whose victim
lies in his power is perhaps unredeemed
in its gloom and futility, save by the
thought of mercy that flashes across him.
Evil at times would seem compelled to
beg aray of light from virtue, to shed
lustre on its triumph. Is it possible for a
man to smile in his hatred and not borrow
the smile of love? But the smile will be
short-lived, for here, as everywhere, there
is no inner injustice. Within the soul the
high-water mark of happiness is always
level with that of justice or charity — which
words I use here indifferently, for indeed

224
Wisdom and Destiny

what is charity or love but justice with
naught to do but count its jewels? The
man who goes forth to seek his happiness
in evil does merely prove thereby that he
is less happy than the other who watches,
and disapproves.> And yet his object is
identical with that of the upright man.
He too is in search of happiness, of some
sort of peace and certainty. Of what
avail to punish him? We do not blame
the poor because their home is not a
palace; it is sad enough to be compelled
to live ina hovel. He whose eyes can
see the invisible, knows that in the soul of
the most unjust man there is justice still:
justice, with all her attributes, her stainless
garments and holy activity. He knows
that the soul of the sinner is ever balancing
peace and love, and the consciousness of
life, no less scrupulously than the soul of
philosopher, saint, or hero; that it watches
the smiles of earth and sky, and is no less
15 a25
Wisdom and Destiny

aware of all whereby those smiles are de-
stroyed, degraded, and poisoned. Weare
not wrong, perhaps, to be heedful of jus-
tice in the midst of a universe that heeds
not at all; as the bee is not wrong to
make honey in a world that itself can
make none. But we are wrong to desire
an external justice, since we know that it
does not exist. Let that which is in us
suffice. All is for ever being weighed and
judged in our soul. It is we who shall
judge ourselves; or rather, our happiness
is our judge.

§ 83.

It may be urged that virtue is subject
to defeat and disappointment, no less than
vice; but the defeats and disappointments
of virtue bring with them no gloom or
distress, for they do but tend to soothe

and enlighten our thoughts. An act of
226
Wisdom and Destiny

virtue may sink into the void, but it is
then, most of all, that we learn to gauge
the depths of life and of soul; and often
will it fall into these depths like a radiant
stone, beside which our thoughts loom
pale. With every vicious scheme that
fails before the innocence of Pierrette,
Madame Rogron’s soul shrivels anew;
whereas the clemency of Titus, falling on
thankless soil, does but induce him to lift
his eyes on high, far beyond love or pardon.
There is no gain in shutting out the world,
though it be with walls of righteousness.
The last gesture of virtue should be that
of an angel flinging open the door. We
should welcome our disillusions; for were
it the will of destiny that our pardon
should always transform an enemy into
a brother, then should we go to our grave
still unaware of all that springs to light
within us beneath the act of unwise cle-

mency, whose unwisdom we never regret.
227
Wisdom and Destiny

We should die without once having
matched all that is best in our soul
against the forces that hedge life around.
The kindly deed that is wasted, the lofty
or only loyal thought that falls on barren
ground — these too have their value, for
the light they throw differs far from the
radiance triumphant virtue suffuses ; and
thus may we see many things in their
differing aspect. There were surely much
joy in the thought that love must in-
variably triumph ; but greater joy is there
still in tearing aside this illusion, and
marching straight on to the truth. “ Man
has been but too prone,” said a philo-
sopher, whom death carried off too soon —
“man has been but too prone, through
all the course of his history, to lodge his
dignity within his errors, and to look
upon truth as a thing that depreciated
himself. It may sometimes seem less

glorious than illusion, but it has the
228
Wisdom and Destiny

advantage of being true. In the whole
domain of thought there is nothing loftier
than truth.” And there is no bitterness
herein, for indeed to the sage truth can
never be bitter. He, too, has had his
longings in the past, has conceived that
truth might move mountains, that a loving
act might for ever soften the hearts of
men ; but to-day he has learned to prefer
that this should not be so. Nor is it
overweening pride that thus has changed
him; he does not think himself more vir-
tuous than the universe; it is his insignifi-
cance in the universe that has been made
clear to him. It is no longer for the spiri-
tual fruit it bears that he tends the love
of justice he has found implanted in his
soul, but for the living flowers that spring
up within him, and because of his deep
respect for all created things. He has no
curses for the ungrateful friend, nor even
for ingratitude itself. He does not say,
229
Wisdom and Destiny

*T am better than that man,” or “I shall
not fall into that vice.’ But he is
taught by ingratitude that benevolence
contains joys that are greater than those
that gratitude can bestow; joys that are
less personal, but more in harmony with
life as a whole. He finds more pleasure
in the attempt to understand that which
is, than in the struggle to believe thar
which he desires. For a long time hi
has been like the beggar who was suddenly
borne away from his hut and lodgeu
in a magnificent palace. He awoke and
threw uneasy glances about him, seeking,
in that immense hall, for the squalid
things he remembered to have had in
his tiny room. Where were the hearth,
the bed, the table, stool, and basin? The
humble torch of his vigils still trembled
by his side, but its light could not reach
the lofty ceiling. The little wings of
flame threw their feeble flicker on to a
230
Wisdom and Destiny

pillar close by, which was all that stood
out from the darkness. But little by
little his eyes grew accustomed to his new
abode. He wandered through room after
room, and rejoiced as profoundly at all
that his torch left in darkness as at all
that it threw into light. At first he
could have wished in his heart that the
doors had been somewhat less lofty, the
staircases not quite so ample, the galleries
less lost in gloom; butas he went straight
before him, he felt all the beauty and
grandeur of that which was yet so unlike
the home of his dream. He rejoiced to
discover that here bed and table were
not the centre round which all revolved,
as it had been with him in his hut. He
was glad that the palace had not been
built to conform with the humble habits
his misery had forced upon him. Heeven
learned to admire the things that defeated

his hopes, for they enabled his eyes to see
231
Wisdom and Destiny

deeper. The sage is consoled and fortified
by everything that exists, for indeed it is of
the essence of wisdom to seek out all that
exists, and to admit it within its circle.

§ 84.

Wisdom even admits the Rogrons;
for she holds life of profounder interest
than even justice or virtue; and where her
attention is disputed by a virtue lost in
abstraction, and by a humble, walled-in
life, she will incline to the humble life,
and not to the magnificent virtue that
holds itself proudly aloof. It is of the
nature of wisdom to despise nothing ; in-
deed, in this world there is perhaps only
one thing truly contemptible, and that
thing is contempt itself. Thinkers too
often are apt to despise those who go
through life without thinking. Thought
is doubtless of high value; our first

232
Wisdom and Destiny

endeavour should be to think as often and
as well as we can; but, for all that, it is
somewhat beside the mark to believe that
the possession, or lack, of a certain faculty
for handling general ideas can interpose
an actual barrier between men. After all,
the difference between the greatest thinker
and the smallest provincial burgher is
often only the difference between a truth
that can sometimes express itself and a
truth that can never crystallise into form.
The difference is considerable —a gap, but
not achasm. The higher our thoughts
ascend, the vainer and the more arbitrary
seems the distinction between him who
is thinking always and him who thinks
not yet. The little burgher is full of
prejudice and of passions at which we
smile ; his ideas are small and petty, and
sometimes contemptible enough ; and yet,
place him side by side with the sage, be-
fore an essential circumstance of life,
233
Wisdom and Destiny

before love, grief, death, before some-
thing that calls for true heroism, and it
shall happen more than once that the sage
will turn to his humble companion as to
the guardian of a truth no less profound,
no less deeply human, than his own.
There are moments when the sage realises
that his spiritual treasures are naught ;
that it is only a few words, or habits, that
divide him from other men; there are
moments when he even doubts the value
of those words. Those are the moments
when wisdom flowers and sends forth
blossom. ‘Thought may sometimes de-
ceive; and the thinker who goes astray
must often retrace his footsteps to the spot
whence those who think not have never
moved away, where they still remain faith-
fully seated round the silent, essential truth.
They are the guardians of the watch-fires
of the tribe; the others take lighted
torches and go wandering abroad; but
234
Wisdom and Destiny

when the air grows heavy and threatens
the feeble flame, then is it well to turn
back and draw close to the watch-fires
once more. These fires seem never to
stir from the spot where they always have
been; but in truth they ever are moving,
keeping time with the worlds; and their
flame marks the hour of humanity on the
dial of the universe. We know exactly
how much the inert forces owe to the
thinker; we forget the deep indebtedness
of the thinker to inert force. Ina world
where all were thinkers, more than one
indispensable truth might perhaps for ever
be lost. For indeed the thinker must
never lose touch with those who do not
think, as his thoughts would then quickly
cease to be just or profound. To disdain
is only too easy, not so to understand;
but in him who is truly wise there passes
no thought of disdain, but it will, sooner
or later, evolve into full comprehension.
.235
Wisdom and Destiny

The thought that can travel scornfully
over the heads of that great silent throng
without recognising its myriad brothers
and sisters that are slumbering there in its
midst, is only too often merely a sterile,
vicious dream. We do well to remind
ourselves at times that the spiritual, no
less than the physical, atmosphere de-
mands more nitrogen than oxygen for
the air to be breathed by man.

§ 85.

It need not surprise us that thinkers
like Balzac should have loved to dwell
on these humble lives. Eternal sameness
runs through them, and yet does each
century mark profoundest change in the
atmosphere that enwraps them. The sky
above has altered, but these simple lives
have ever the self-same gestures; and it

is these unchanging gestures thet tell of
236
Wisdom and Destiny

the altered sky. A great deed of heroism
fascinates us; our eye cannot travel be-
yond the act itself; but insignificant
thoughts and deeds lead us on to the
horizon beyond them; and is not the
shining star of human wisdom’ always
situate on the horizon? If we could
see these things as nature sees them,
with her thoughts and feelings, we should
realise that the uniform mediocrity that
runs through these lives cannot truly be
mediocre, from the mere fact of its uni-
formity. And indeed this matters but
little; we can never judge another soul
above the high-water mark of our own;
and however insignificant a creature may
seem to us at first, as our own soul
emerges from shadew, so does the shadow
lift from him. There is nothing our eyes
behold that is tee small to deserve our
love; and there here we cannot love, we
have only to resee our lamp till it reaches
N37
Wisdom and Destiny

the level of love, and then throw its light
around. Let only one ray of this light
go forth every day from our soul, we may
then be content. It matters not where
the light falls. There is not a thing in
this world whereupon your glance or your
thought can rest but contains within it more
treasure than either of these can fathom;
nor is there a thing so small but it has a
vastness within that the light that a soul
can spare can, at best, but faintly illumine.

§ 86.

Is not the very essence of human des-
tiny, stripped of the details that bewilder
us, to be found in the most ordinary
lives? The mighty struggle of morality
“on the heights is glorious to witness; but
so will a keen observer profoundly admire
a magnificent tree that stands alone in a

desert, and, his contemplation over, once
238
Wisdom and Destiny

more go back to the forest, where there
are no marvellous trees, but trees in count-
less abundance. The immense forest is
doubtless made up of ordinary branches
and stems; but is it not vast, is it not as
it should be, seeing that it is the forest?
Not by the exceptional shall the last word
ever be spoken; and indeed what we call
the sublime should be only a clearer, pro-
founder insight into all that is perfectly
normal. It is of service, often, to watch
those on the peaks who do battle; but
it is well, too, not to forget those in the
valley below, who fight not at all. As
we see all that happens to these whose
life knows no struggle ; as we realise how
much must be conquered in us before we
can rightly distinguish their narrower joys
from the joy known to them who are striv-
ing on high, then perhaps does the struggle
itself appear to become less important ; but,
for all that, we love it the mare. And the
239
Wisdom and Destiny

reward is the sweeter to us for the silence
that enwraps its coming; nor is this from
a desire to keep our happiness secret —
such as a crafty courtier might feel who
hugs fortune’s favours to him — but, per-
haps, because it is only when happiness
thus whispers low in our ear, and no other
men know, that it is not according us joys
that are filched from our brother’s share.
Then do we no longer say to ourselves,
as we look on those brothers: “ How
great is the distance between such as these
and myself,” but in all simplicity do we
| murmur at last to ourselves: “ The loftier
‘my thoughts become, the less is there to
"divide me from the humblest of my fellow-
| creatures, from those who are most plenti-
q ful on earth; and every step that I take
towards an uncertain ideal, is a step that

 

| brings me the nearer to those whom I
once despised, in the vanity and ignorance

of my earliest days.”

240
Wisdom and Destiny

After all, what is a humble life? It
is thus we choose to term the life that
ignores itself, that drains itself dry in the
place of its birth —a life whose feelings
and thoughts, whose desires and passions,
entwine themselves around the most in-
significant things. But it suffices to look
at a life for that life to seem great. A
life in itself can be neither great nor
small; the largeness is all in the eye
that surveys it; and an existence that
all men hold to be lofty and vast, is one
that has long been accustomed to look
loftily on itself from within. If you
have never done this, your life must be
narrow; but the man who watches you
live will discern, in the very obscurity
of the corner you fill, an element of
horizon, a foothold to cling to, whence
his thoughts will rise with surer and more
human strength. There is not an exist-
ence about us but at first seems colourless,

16 241
Wisdom and Destiny

dreary, lethargic: what can our soul have
in common with that of an elderly spin-
ster, a slow-witted ploughman, a miser
who worships his gold? Can any con-
nection exist between such as these and
a deep-rooted feeling, a boundless love
for humanity, an interest time cannot
stale? But let a Balzac step forward
and stand in the midst of them, with
his eyes and ears on the watch; and the
emotion that lived and died in an old-
fashioned country parlour shall as mightily
stir our heart, shall as unerringly find its
way to the deepest sources of life, as the
majestic passion that ruled the life of a
king and shed its triumphant lustre from
the dazzling height of a throne. “ There
are certain little agitations,” says Balzac in
the Curé de Tours, the most admirable
of all his studies of humble life — “ there
are certain little agitations that are capable
of generating as much passion within the
242
Wisdom and Destiny

soul as would suffice to direct the most
important social interests. Is it not a
mistake to imagine that time only flies
swiftly with those whose hearts are de-
voured by mighty schemes, which fret
and fever their life? Not an hour sped
past the Abbé Troubert but was as ani-
mated, as laden with its burden of anxious
thought, as lined with pleading hope and
deep despair, as could be the most des-
perate hour of gambler, plotter, or lover.
God alone can tell how much energy is
consumed in the triumphs we achieve;
over men, and things, and ourselves. We
may not be always aware whither our
steps are leading, but are only too fully
conscious of the wearisomeness of the
journey. And yet —if the historian may
be permitted to lay aside, for one moment,
the story he is telling, and to assume
the rdle of the critic—as you cast your
eyes on the lives of these old maids and
243
Wisdom and Destiny

these two priests, seeking to learn the
cause of the sorrow which twisted their
heartstrings, it will be revealed to you,
perhaps, that certain passions must be
experienced by man for there to develop
within him the qualities that make a life
noble, that widen its area, and stifle the
egoism natural to all.”

He speaks truly. Not for its own
sake, always, should we love the light,
but for the sake of what it illumines.
The fire on the mountain shines brightly,
but there are few men on the mountain;
and more service may often be rendered
by the torchlight, there where the crowd
is. It is in the humble lives that is
found the substance of great lives; and
by watching the narrowest feelings does
enlargement come to our own. Nor is
this from any repugnance these feelings
inspire, but because they no longer accord
with the majestic truth that controls us.

244
Wisdom and Destiny

It is well to have visions of a better
life than that of every day, but it is
the life of every day from which elements
of a better life must come. We are told
we should fix our eyes on high, far above
life; but perhaps it is better still that
our soul should look straight before it,
and that the heights whereupon it should
yearn to lay all its hopes and its dreams
should be the mountain peaks that stand
clearly out from the clouds that gild
the horizon.

§ 87.

This brings us back once again to
external destiny; but the tears that ex-
ternal suffering wrings from us are not the
only tears known to man. The sage whom
we love must dwell in the midst of all
human passions, for only on the passions
known to the heart can his wisdom safely

245
Wisdom and Destiny

be nourished. They are nature’s artisans,
sent by her to help us construct the palace
of our consciousness — of our happiness,
in other words; and he who rejects these
workers, deeming that he is able, unaided,
to raise all the stones of life, will be com-
pelled for ever to lodge his soul in a bare
and gloomy cell. The wise man learns to
purify his passions; to stifle them can
never be proof of wisdom. And, indeed,
these things are all governed by the
position we take as we stand on the stairs
of time. To some of us moral infirmities
are sO many stairs tending downwards ;
to others they represent steps that lead us
on high. The wise man perchance may
do things that are done by the unwise man
also; but the latter is forced by his pas-
sions to become the abject slave of his
instincts, whereas the sage’s passions will
end by illumining much that was vague
in his consciousness. To love madly,
246
Wisdom and Destiny

perhaps, is not wise ; still, should he love
madly, more wisdom will doubtless come
to him than if he had always loved wisely.
It is not wisdom, but the most useless form
of pride that can flourish in vacancy and
inertia. It is not enough to know what
should be done, not though we can un-
erringly declare what saint or hero would
do. Such things a book can teach in a
day. It is not enough to intend to live
a noble life and then retire to a cell, there
to brood over this intention. No wisdom
thus acquired can truly guide or beautify
the soul; it is of as little avail as the
counsels that others can offer. “It is in
the silence that follows the storm,” says a
Hindu proverb, “and not in the silence
before it, that we should search for the
budding flower.”

247
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 88.

The earnest wayfarer along the paths of
life does but become the more deeply con-
vinced, as his travels extend, of the beauty,
the wisdom, and truth of the simplest and
humblest laws of existence. Their uni-
formity, the mere fact of their being so
general, such matter of every day, are in
themselves enough to compel his admira-
tion. And little by little he holds the
abnormal ever less highly, and neither seeks
nor desires it; for it is soon borne home
to him, as he reflects on the vastness of
nature, with her slow, monotonous move-
ment, that the ridiculous pretensions our
ignorance and vanity put forth are the
most truly abnormal of all. He no
longer vexes the hours as they pass with
prayer for strange or marvellous ad-

venture; for these come only to such as
248
Wisdom and Destiny

have not yet learned to have faith in life
and themselves. He no longer awaits,
with folded arms, the chance for super-
human effort; for he feels that he exists
in every act that is human. He no
longer requires that death, or friendship,
or love should come to him decked out
with garlands illusion has woven, or
escorted by omen, coincidence, presage;
but they come in their bareness and
simpleness, and are always sure of his
welcome. He believes that all that the
weak, and the idle, and thoughtless con-
sider sublime and exceptional, that the
full equivalent for the most heroic deed,

BE mate

can be found in the simple life that is |

bravely and wholly faced. He no longer

considers himself the chosen son of the

universe; but his happiness, conscious-

ness, peace of mind, have gained ll

that his pride has lost. And, this point

once attained, then will the miraculous
249
Wisdom and Destiny

adventures of a St. Theresa or Jean-de-la-
Croix, the ecstasy of the mystics, the super-
natural incidents of legendary loves, the
star of an Alexander or a Napoleon —
then will all these seem the merest
childish illusions compared with the
healthy wisdom of a loyal, earnest man,
;who has no craving to soar above his
fellows so as to feel what they cannot
feel, but whose heart and brain find the
light that they need in the unchanging
feelings of all. The truest man will
never be he who desires to be other than
man. How many there are that thus
waste their lives, scouring the heavens for
sight of the comet that never will come;
‘but disdaining to look at the stars, be-
| cause these can be seen by all, and,
‘moreover, are countless in number! This
‘craving for the extraordinary is often the
' special weakness of ordinary men, who
fail to perceive that the more normal,
250
Wisdom and Destiny

and ordinary, and uniform events may
appear to us, the more are we able to
appreciate the profound happiness that
this uniformity enfolds, and the nearer
are we drawn to the truth and tranquillity
of the great force by which we have
being. What can be less abnormal than

the ocean, which covers two-thirds of the.

globe ; and yet, what is there more vast?
There is not a thought or a feeling, not
an act of beauty or nobility, whereof man
is capable, but can find complete expres-
sion in the simplest, most ordinary life;
and all that cannot be expressed therein
must of necessity belong to the falsehoods
of vanity, ignorance, or sloth.

§ 89.
Does this mean that the wise man should

expect no more from life than other men:

that he should love mediocrity and limit
251
Wisdom and Destiny

his desires ; content himself with little and
restrict the horizon of his happiness, be-
cause of the fear lest happiness escape
him? By no means; for the wisdom
is halting and sickly that can too freely
renounce a legitimate human hope. Many
desires in man may be legitimate still,
notwithstanding the disapproval of reason,
sometimes unduly severe. But the fact
that our happiness does not seem extra-
ordinary to those about us by no means
warrants our thinking that we are not
happy. The wiser we are, the more readily
do we perceive that happiness lies in our
grasp; that it has no more enviable
gift than the uneventful moments it
brings. The sage has learnt to quicken
and love the silent substance of life. In
this silent substance only can faithful joys
be found, for abnormal happiness never
ventures to go with us to the tomb. The

day that comes and goes without special
252
Wisdom and Destiny
whisper of hope or happiness should be as

dear to us, and as welcome, as any one of
its brothers. On its way to us it has
traversed the same worlds and the self-
same space as the day that finds us on
a throne or enthralled by a mighty love.
The hours are less dazzling, perhaps, that
its mantle conceals; but at least we may
rely more fully on their humble devotion.
There are as many eternal minutes in the
week that goes by in silence, as in the one
that comes boldly towards us with mighty
shout and clamour. And indeed it is we
who tell ourselves all that the hour would
seem to say; for the hour that abides
with us is ever a timid and nervous guest,
that will smile if its host be smiling, or
weep if his eyes be wet. It has been
charged with no mission to bring happi-
ness to us; it is we who should comfort
the hour that has sought refuge within
our soul. And he is wise who always
253
Wisdom and Destiny

finds words of peace that he can whisper
low to his guest on the threshold. We
‘should let no opportunity for happiness
escape us, and the simplest causes of
‘happiness should be ever stored in our
‘soul. It is well, at first, to know happiness
'as men conceive it, so that, later, we may
have good reason for preferring the happi-
ness of our choice. For, herein, it is not
unlike what we are told of love. To
know what real love should be we must
have loved profoundly, and that first love
must have fled. It is well to know
moments of material happiness, since they
teach us where to look for loftier joys ;
and all that we gain, perhaps, from
listening to the hours that babble aloud
in their wantonness is that we are
slowly learning the language of the
hours whose voice is hushed. And
of these there are many; they come in
battalions, so close on the heels of each
254
Wisdom and Destiny

other that treachery and flight cannot be;
-wherefore it is on them alone that the
sage should depend. For he will be happy
whose eyes have learned to detect the
hidden smile and mysterious jewels of the
myriad, nameless hours; and where are
these jewels to be found, if not in our-
selves?

§ go.

But there is a kind of ignoble discretion
that has least in common, of all things,
with the wisdom we speak of here; for
we had far better spend our energy round
even fruitless happiness, than slumber by
the fireside awaiting joys that never may
come. Only the joys that have been offered
to all, and none have accepted, will knock
at his door who refuses himself to stir
forth. Nor is the other man wise who
holds the reins too tight on his feelings,

255
Wisdom, and Destiny

and halts them when reason commands, or
experience whispers. The friend is not
wise who will not confide in his friend,
remembering always that friendships may
come to an end; nor the lover, who draws
back for fear lest he may find shipwreck
in love. For here, were we twenty times
unfortunate, it is still only the perishable
portion of our energy for happiness that
suffers ; and what is wisdom after all but
this same energy for happiness cleansed
of all that is impure? To be wise we
must first learn to be happy, that we may
attach ever smaller importance to what
happiness may be in itself. Weshould be
as happy as possible, and our happiness
should last as long as is possible ; for those
who can finally issue forth from self by
the portal of happiness, know infinitely
wider freedom than those who pass through
the gate of sadness. The joy of the sage

illumines his heart and his soul alike,
256
Wisdom and Destiny

whereas sadness most often throws light
on the heart alone. One might almost
compare the man who had never been
happy with a traveller whose every
journey had been taken by night. More-
over, there is in happiness a humility
deeper and nobler, purer and wider, than
sorrow can ever procure. There is a cer-
tain humility that ranks with parasitic
virtues, such as sterile self-sacrifice, arbi-
trary chastity, blind submission, fanatic
renouncement, penitence, false shame, and
many others, which have from time imme-
morial turned aside from their course the
waters of human morality, and forced them
into a stagnant pool, around which our
memory still lingers. Nor do I speak of
a cunning humility that is often mere
calculation, or, taken at its best, a timidity
that has its root in pride—a loan at
usury that our vanity of to-day extends
to our vanity of to-morrow. And even
17 257
Wisdom and Destiny

the sage at times conceives it well to
lower himself in his own self-esteem, and
to deny superior merits that are his
when comparing himself with other men.
Humility of this kind may throw a charm
around our ways of life, but yet, sincere as
it doubtless may be, it nevertheless attacks
the loyalty due to ourselves, which we
should value high above all. And it
surely implies a certain timidity of con-
science ; whereas the conscience of the sage
should harbour neither timidity nor shame.
But by the side of this too personal humility
there exists another humility that extends
to all things, that is lofty and strong,
that has fed on all that is best in our
brain and our heart and our soul. It is
a humility that defines the limit of the
hopes and adventures of men ; that lessens
us only to add to the grandeur of all we
behold; that teaches us where we should

look for the true importance of man,
258
Wisdom and Destiny

which lies not in that which he is, but
‘in that which his eyes can take in, which
| he strives to accept and to grasp. It is
true that sorrow will also bring us to the
realm of this humility; but it hastens us
through, branching off on the road to
a mysterious gate of hope, on whose
threshold we lose many days; whereas
happiness, that after the first few hours
has nothing else left to do, will lead us
in silence:through path after path till we
reach the most unforeseen, inaccessible
places of all. It is when the sage knows
he possesses at last all man is allowed to
possess, that he begins to perceive that it
is his manner of regarding what man
may never possess, that determines the
value of such things as he truly may call
his own. And therefore must we long
have sunned ourselves in the rays of
happiness before we can truly conceive an
independent view of life. We must be
259
Wisdom and Destiny

happy, not for happiness’ sake, but so that

- we may learn to see distinctly that which
vain expectation of happiness wovld for
‘ever hide from our gaze.

i
§ gt.

Economy avails us nothing in the region
of the heart, for it is there that men
gather the harvest of life’s very substance;
it were better that nothing were done there
than that things should be done by halves;
and that which we have not dared to risk
is most surely lost of all. To limit our
passions is only to limit ourselves, and we
are the losers by just so much as we hoped
to gain. There are certain fastnesses with-
in our soul that lie buried so deep that
love alone dare venture down; and it
returns laden with undreamed-of jewels,
whose lustre can only be seen as they pass

from our open hand to the hand of one
260
Wisdom and Destiny

we love. And indeed it would seem that
so clear a light springs from our hands as
they open thus to give, that it penetrates
substance too opaque to yield to the
mysterious rays just discovered.

§ 92.

It avails us nothing unduly to bemoan
our errors or losses. For happen what
may to the man of simple faith, still, at
the last minute of the sorrow-laden hour,
at the end of the week or year, still will
he find some cause for gladness as he
turns his eyes within. Little by little
he has learned to regret without tears.
He is as a father might be who returns
to his home in the evening, his day’s
work done. He may find his children
in tears perhaps, or playing dangerous,
forbidden games; the furniture scattered,

glasses broken, a lamp overturned; but
a61
Wisdom and Destiny

shall he therefore despair? It would cer-
tainly have been better had the children
been more obedient, had they quietly
learned their lessons — this would have
been more in keeping with every moral
theory ; but how unreasonable the father
who, in the midst of his harsh rebuke,
could withhold a smile as he turned his
head away! The children have acted un-
wisely, perhaps, in their exuberance of life;
but why should this distress him? All is
well, so long as he return home at night,
so long as he ever keep about him the key
of the guardian dwelling. As we look
into ourselves, and pass in review what our
heart, and brain, and soul have attempted
and carried through while we were away,
the benefit lies far more in the search-
ing glance itself than in the actual inspec-
tion. And if the hours have not once
let fall their mysterious girdle on their

way past our threshold ; if the rooms be
262
Wisdom and Destiny

as empty as on the day of departure,
and those within have but sat with folded
arms and worked not at all —still, as we
enter, shall something be learned from
our echoing footsteps, of the extent, and
the clearness, and the fidelity, of our
‘home.

§ 93.

No day can be uneventful, save in our-
selves alone; but in the day that seems
most uneventful of all, there is still room
for the loftiest destiny; for there is far
more scope for such destiny within our-
selves than on the whole continent of
Europe. Not by the extent of empire is
the range of destiny governed, but, indeed,
by the depth of our soul. It is in our:
conception of life that real destiny is,
found; when at last there is delicate
balance between the insoluble questions of

263
Wisdom and Destiny

heaven and the wavering response of our
soul. And these questions become the
more tranquil as they seem to comprise
more and more; and to the sage, whatever
may happen will still widen the scope of
the questions, still give deeper confidence
to the reply. Speak not of destiny when
the event that has brought you joy or
sadness has still altered nothing in your
manner of regarding the universe. All
that remains to us when love and glory
are over, when adventures and passions
have faded into the past, is but a deeper
and ever-deepening sense of the infinite ;
and if we have not that within us, then
are we destitute indeed. And this sense
of the infinite is more than a mere assem-
blage of thoughts, which, indeed, are but
the innumerable steps that thither lead.
There is no happiness in happiness itself,
unless it help our comprehension of the

rest, unless it help us in some measure to
264
Wisdom and Destiny

conceive that the very universe itself must
rejoice in existence. The sage who has
attained a certain height will find peace
in all things that happen; and the event
that saddens him, as other men, tarries but
an instant ere it goes to strengthen his
deep perception of life. He who has
learned to see in all things only matter for
unselfish wonder, can be deprived of no
satisfaction whatever without there spring
to sudden life within him, from the mere
feeling that this joy can be dispensed with,
a high protecting thought that enfolds
him in its light. That destiny is beautiful
wherein each event, though charged with
joy or sadness, has brought reflection to
us, has added something to our range
of soul, has given us greater peace
wherewith to cling to life. And, in-
deed, the accident that robs us of
our love, that leads us along in triumph,
or even that seats us on a throne, reveals
265
Wisdom and Destiny

but little of the workings of destiny;
which, indeed, lie far more in the thoughts
that arise in our mind as we look at the '
men around us, at the woman we love;
as we dwell on the feelings within us; as
we fix our eyes on the evening sky with
its crown of indifferent stars.

§ 94

A woman of extraordinary beauty and
talent, possessed of the rarest qualities of
mind and soul, was one day asked by a
friend, to whom she seemed the most
perfect creature on earth: ‘“ What are
your plans? Can any man be worthy of
your love? Your future puzzles me. I
cannot conceive a destiny that shall be
lofty enough for a soul such as yours.”
He knew but little of destiny. To him,
as to most men, it meant. thrones,

triumphs, dazzling adventures: these
266
Wisdom and Destiny

things seemed to him the sum of a
human destiny ; whereby he did but prove
that he knew not what destiny was.
And, in the first place, why this disdain
of to-day? To disdain to-day is to
prove that yesterday has been misunder-
stood. To disdain to-day is to declare
oneself a stranger, and what can you hope
to do in a world where you shall ever
pass as a stranger? To-day has this
advantage over yesterday, that it exists
and was made for us. Be to-day what
it will, it has wider knowledge than
yesterday; and by that alone does it
become more beautiful, and vaster. Why
should we think that the woman I speak
of would have known a more brilliant
destiny in Venice, Florence, or Rome?
Her presence might have been sought at
magnificent festival, and her beauty have
found a fitting surrounding in exquisite
landscape. She might have had princes
267
Wisdom and Destiny

and kings, the elect of the world, at her
feet; and perhaps it had needed but one
of her smiles to add to a great nation’s
gladness, to ennoble or chasten the thought
of an epoch. Whereas here all her life
will be spent among four or five people
— four or five souls that know of her soul,
and love her. It may be that she never
shall stir from her dwelling; that of her
life, of her thoughts, and the strength
that is in her, there will remain not a
trace among men. It may be that her
beauty, her force and her instinct for good,
will be buried within hér: in her heart
and the hearts of the few who are near.
And even then, and if this be so,
the soul of this woman doubtless shall
find its own thing to do. The mighty
gates through which we must pass to a
helpful and noteworthy life no longer
grate on their hinges with the deafening

clamour of old. They are smaller,
268
Wisdom and Destiny

perhaps, than they were; less vast and im-
posing ; but their number is greater to-day,
and they admit us, in silence, to paths
that extend very far. And even though
the home of this woman be not brightened
by one single gleam from without, will
she have failed to fulfil her destiny be-
cause her life is lived in the shade?
Cannot destiny be beautiful and complete
in itself, without help from without? As
the soul that has truly conquered surveys
the triumphs of the past, it is glad of
those only that brought with them a deeper
knowledge of life and a nobler humility ;
of those that lent sweeter charm to the
moments when love, glory, and enthusiasm
having faded away, the fruit that a few
hours of boiling passion had ripened was
gathered in meditation and silence. When
the feasting is over: when charity,
kindness and valorous deed all lie far

behind us: what is there left to the soul
269
Wisdom and Destiny

but some stray recollections, a gain of
some consciousness, and a feeling that
helps us to look on our place in the
world with more knowledge and less
apprehension —a feeling blent with some
wisdom, from the numberless things it
has learned? When the hour for rest
has sounded —as it must sound every
night and at every moment of solitude —
when the gaudy vestments of love, and
glory, and power fall helplessly round
us; what is it we can take with us as
we seek refuge within ourselves, where
the happiness of cach day is measured by
the knowledge the d-y has brought us,
by the thoughts and the confidence it
has helped us to acquire? Is our true
destiny to be found in the things which
take place about us, or in that which
abides in our soul? ‘ Be a man’s power
or glory never so great,” said a philoso-

pher, “ his soul soon learns how to value
270°
Wisdom and Destiny

the feelings that spring from external
events; and as he perceives that no in-
crease has come to his physical faculties,
that these remain wholly unchanged,
neither altered nor added to, then does
the sense of his nothingness burst full
upon him. The king who should govern
the world must still, like the rest of his
brothers, revolve in a limited circle, whose
every law must be obeyed; and on his
impressions and thoughts must his happi-
ness wholly depend.” The impressions
his memory retains, we might add, be-
cause they have chastened his mind; for
the souls that we deal with here will retain
such impressions only as have quickened
their sense of goodness, as have made
them a little more noble. Is it impossible
to find—#it matters not where, nor how
great be the silence—the same undissolv-
able matter that lurks in the cup of the

noblest external existence? and seeing that
271
Wisdom and Destiny

nothing ?s truly our own till it faithfully
follow us into the darkness and silence,
why should the thing that has sprung to
life there be less faithful in silence and
darkness? But we will pursue this no
farther, for it leads to a wisdom of over-
much theory. For all that a brilliant ex-
terior destiny is not indispensable, still
should we always regard it as wholly de-
sirable, and pursue it as keenly as though
we valued it highly. It behoves the sage
to knock at the door of every temple of
glory, of every dwelling where happiness,
love, and activity are to be found. And
if his strenuous effort and long expecta-
tion remain unrewarded, if no door fly
open, still may he find, perhaps, in the
mere expectation and effort an equivalent
for all the emotions and light that he
sought. “To act,” says Barrés, “is to
‘annex to our thoughts vaster fields of
experience.” It is also, perhaps, to think
272
Wisdom and Destiny

more quickly than thought, as more com-
pletely ; for we no longer think with the
brain alone, but with every atom of life.
It is to wrap round with dream the pro-
foundest sources of thought, and then to
confront them with fact. But to act is
not always to conquer. To attempt, to
be patient, and wait — these, too, may be
action; as also, to hear, to watch, and be
silent.

If the lot of the woman we speak of
had been cast in Athens, or Florence, or
Rome, there had been, in her life, certain
motives of grandeur, occasions for beauty
and happiness, that she may well never
meet with to-day. And she is the poorer
for lacking the efforts she might have put
forth, the memory of what might have
been done; for in these lies a force that
is precious and vital, that often indeed
will transform many more things within
us, than a thought which is morally,

18 273
Wisdom and Destiny

mentally worth many thousand such efforts
and memories. And indeed it is there~

fore alone that we should desire a brilliant, |
feverish destiny; because it summons to

life certain forces and feelings that would
otherwise never emerge from the slum-
berous peace of an over-tranquil existence.
But from the moment we know, or even
suspect, that these feelings lie dormant
within us, we are already giving life to all
that is best in those feelings; and it is as
though we were, for one brief moment,
looking down upon a glorious external
destiny from heights such destiny shall
only attain at the end of its days; as
though we were prematurely gathering
the fruit of the tree, which it shall itself
still find barren until many a storm has

passed.
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 95.

Last night, re-reading Saint-Simon —
with whom we seem to ascend a lofty
tower, whence our gaze rests on hundreds
of human destinies, astir in the valley below
—I understood what a beautiful destiny
meant to the instinct of man. It would
doubtless have puzzled Saint-Simon him-
self to have told what it was that he
loved and admired in some of his heroes,
whom he enwraps in a sort of resigned,
and almost unconscious, respect. Thou-
sands of virtues that he esteemed highly
have ceased to exist to-day, and many
a quality now seems petty indeed that
he commended in some of his great ones.
And yet are there, unperceived as it were
by him, four or five men in the midst of
the glittering crowd hard by the monarch’s
throne, four or five earnest benevolent faces

275
Wisdom and Destiny

on whom our eye still rests gladly ; though
Saint-Simon gives them no special atten-
tion or thought, for in his heart he
looks with disfavour on the ideas that
govern their life. Fénelon is there; the
Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers; there
is Monsieur le Dauphin. Their happi-
ness is no greater than that of the rest
of mankind. They achieve no marked
success, they gain no resplendent victory.
They live as the others live —in the fret
and expectation of the thing that we
choose to call happiness, because it has
yet to come. Fénelon incurs the dis-
pleasure of the crafty, bigoted king,
who, for all his pride, would resent the
most trivial offence with the humble-
ness of humblest vanity ; who was great
in small things, and petty in all that
was great—-for such was Louis XIV.
Fénelon is condemned, persecuted, exiled.

The Dukes of Chevreuse and Beauvilliers
276
Wisdom and Destiny

continue to hold important office at
Court, but none the less deem it prudent
to live in a kind of voluntary retirement.
The Dauphin is not in favour with the
King; a powerful, envious clique are
for ever intriguing against him, and they
finally succeed in crushing his youthful
military glory. He lives in the midst
of disgrace, misadventure, disaster, that
seem irreparable in the eyes of that vain
and servile Court; for disgrace and dis-
aster assume the proportions the manners
of the day accord. Finally he dies, a
few days after the death of the wife
he had loved so tenderly. He dies—
poisoned, perhaps, as she too; the thun-
derbolt falling just as the very first rays
of kingly favour, whereon he had almost
ceased to count, were stealing over his
threshold. Such were the troubles and
misfortunes, the sorrows and disappoint-
ments, that wrapped these lives round;
277
Wisdom and Destiny

and yet, as we look on this little group,
standing firm and silent in the midst
of the feverish, intermittent glitter of
the rest, then do these four destinies
seem truly beautiful to us, and enviable.
Through all their vicissitudes one com-
mon light shines through them. The
great soul of Fénelon illumines them
all. Fénelon is faithful to his loftiest
thoughts of piety, meekness, wonder,
justice, and love; and the other three
are faithful to him, who was their
master and friend. And what though
the mystic ideas of Fénelon be no longer
shared by us: what though the ideas
that we cling to ourselves, and deem
the profoundest and noblest — the ideas
that live at the root of our every conviction
of life, that have served as the basis of all
our moral happiness — what though these
should one day fall in ruins behind us,

and only arouse a smile among such as
278
Wisdom and Destiny

believe that they have found other thoughts
still, which to them seem more human,
and final? Thought, of itself, is pos-
sessed of no vital importance; it is the
feelings awakened within us by thought
that ennoble and brighten our life.
Thought is our aim, perhaps; but it may
be with this as with many a journey we
take—the place we are bound for may
interest us less than the journey itself, the
people we meet on the road, the unfore-
seen that may happen. Here, as every-
where, it is only the sincerity of human
feeling that abides. As for a thought, we
know not, it may be deceptive ; but the love,
wherewith we have loved it, will surely
return to our soul; nor cana single drop of
its clearness or strength be abstracted by
error. Of that perfect ideal that each of
us strives to build up in himself, the sum
total of all our thoughts will help only to
model the outline; but the elements that
279
Wisdom and Destiny

go to construct it, and keep it alive,
are the purified passion, unselfishness,
loyalty, wherein these thoughts have had
being. The extent of our love for the
thing which we hold to be true is of
greater importance than even the truth
itself. Does not love bring more good-
ness to us than thought can ever convey?
Loyally to love a great error may well be
more helpful than meanly to serve a great
truth ; for in doubt, no less than in faith,
are passion and love to be found. Some
doubts are as generous and passionate as
the very noblest convictions. Bea thought
of the loftiest, surest, or of the most pro-
foundly uncertain, the best that it has to
offer is still the chance that it gives us of
loving some one thing wholly, without
reserve. Whether it be to man, ora God;
to country, to world or to error, that I
truly do yield myself up, the precious ore
that shall some day be found buried deep

280
Wisdom and Destiny

in the ashes of love will have sprung from
the love itself, and not from the thing that
I loved. The sincerity of an attachment,
its simplicity, firmness, and zeal — these
leave a track behind them that time
can never efface. All passes away and
changes; it may be that all is lost, save
only the glow of this ardour, fertility, and
strength of our heart.

§ 96.

“Never did man possess his soul in
such peace as he,” says Saint-Simon of one
of them, who was surrounded on all sides
by malice, and scheming, and snares. And
further on he speaks of the “
quillity ” of another, and this “ wise tran-
quillity”” pervades every one of those whom
he terms the “little flock.” The “little
flock,” truly, of fidelity to all that was

noblest in thought; the “little flock” of
281

wise tran-
Wisdom and Destiny

friendship, loyalty, self-respect, and inner
contentment, that pass along, radiant
with peace and simplicity, in the midst
of the lies and ambitions, the follies and
treacheries, of Versailles. They are not
saints, in the vulgar sense of the word.
They have not fled to the depths of forest
or desert, or sought egotistic shelter in
narrow cells. They are sages, who re-
main within life and the things that are
real. It isnot their piety that saves them ;
itis not in God alone that their soul has
found strength. To love God, and to
serve Him with all one’s might, will not
suffice to bring peace and strength to the
soul of man. It is only by means of the
knowledge and thought we have gained
and developed by contact with men that
we can learn how God should be loved;
for, notwithstanding all things, the human
soul remains profoundly human still. It
may be taught to cherish the invisible, but
282
Wisdom and Destiny

it will ever find far more actual nourish-
ment in the virtue or feeling that is simply
and wholly human, than in the virtue or
passion divine. If there come towards us
a man whose soul is truly tranquil and
calm, we may be certain that human
virtues have given him his tranquillity and
his calmness. Were we permitted to peer
into the secret recesses of hearts that are
now no more, we might discover, perhaps,
that the fountain of peace whereat Fénelon
slaked his thirst every night of his exile
lay rather in his loyalty to Madame Guyon
in her misfortune, in his love for the
slandered, persecuted Dauphin, than in
his expectation of eternal reward; rather
in the irreproachable human conscience
within him, overflowing with fidelity and
tenderness, than in the hopes he cherished
as a Christian.

383
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 97-

Admirable indeed is the serenity of this
“little flock!” No virtue, here, to
kindle dazzling fires on the mountain,
but heart and soul that are alive with
flame. No heroism but that of love, of
confidence and sincerity, that remember

 

“and are content to wait. Some men
“there are whose virtue issues from them
with a noise of clanging gates; in others
it dwells as silent as the maid who never
stirs from home, who sits thoughtfully
by the fireside, always ready to welcome
those who enter from the cold without.
There is less need of heroic hours, per-
haps, in a beautiful life, than of weeks
that are grave, and uniform, and pure.
It may be that the soul that is loyal
and perfectly just is more precious than
the one that is tender or full of devotion.
384
Wisdom and Destiny

It will enter less wholly perhaps, and
with less exaltation, into the more exu-
berant adventures of life; but in the
events that occur every day we can trust
it more fully, rely more completely upon
it; and is there a man, after all, no
matter how strange and delirious and
brilliant his life may have been, who has
not spent the great bulk of his time in
the midst of most ordinary incident?
In our very sublimest hour, as we stand
in the midst of the dazzling circles it
throws, are we not startled to find that
the habits and thoughts of our soberest
hour are whirling around with the rest?
We must always come back to our normal
life, that is built on the solid earth
and primitive rock. We are not called
upon to contest each day with dishonour,
despair, or death; but it is imperative,
perhaps, that I should be able to tell

myself, at every hour of sadness, that
285
Wisdom and Destiny

there exists, somewhere, an unchangeable,
unconquerable soul that has drawn near
to my soul —a soul that is faithful and
silent, blind to all that it deems not
conformable with the truth. We can
‘only have praise for heroism, and for
surpassingly generous deeds; but more

rowers arctan =

praise still—as it demands a more vigi-

 

 

 

re

lant strength — for the man who never
REITER * OO spi sss Dal S REPO

allows an inferior thought to seduce him ;

 

 

“who leads a less glorious li life, perhaps,
“but one of more uniform worth. Let us
sometimes, in our meditations, bring our
desire for moral perfection to the level
of daily truth, and be taught how far
easier it is to confer occasional benefit
than never to do any harm; to bring
occasional happiness than never be cause

of tears.

286
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 98.

Their refuge, their “firm rock,” as
Saint-Simon calls it, lay in each other,
and, above all, in themselves ; and all that
was blameless within their soul became
steadfastness in the rock. A thousand
substances go to form the foundations of
this ‘firm rock,” but all that we hold to
be blameless within us will sink to its
centre and base. It is true that our
standard of conduct may often be sadly
at fault; and the vilest of men has a_
moment each night when he proudly
surveys some detestable thought, that
seems wholly blameless to him. But I
speak of a virtue, here, that is higher
than everyday virtue; and the most
ordinary man is aware what a virtue
becomes, when it is ordinary virtue no

longer. Moral beauty, indeed, though
287
Wisdom and Destiny

it be of the rarest kind, never passes
the comprehension of the most narrow-
minded of men; and no act is so readily
understood as the act that is truly sub-
lime. We may admire a deed profoundly,
perhaps, and yet not rise to its height;
but it is imperative that we should not
abide in the darkness that covers the
thing we blame. Many a happiness in
life, as many a disaster, is due to chance
alone; but the peace within us can never
be governed by chance. Some souls, I
know, for ever are building; others have
preference for ruins; and others, still,
will wander, their whole life through,
seeking shelter beneath strange roofs.
And difficult as it may be to transform
the instincts that dwell in the soul, it is
well that those who build not should be
made aware of the joy that the others ex-
perience as they incessantly pile stone upon
stone. Their thoughts, and attachments,
288
Wisdom and Destiny

and love; their convictions, deceptions,
and even their doubts—all stand in
good service ; and when the passing storm
has demolished their mansion, they build
once again with the ruins, a little distance
away, something less stately perhaps, but
better adapted to all the requirements of
life. What regret, disillusion, or sadness
can shatter the homestead of him who,
in choosing the stones for his dwelling,
was careful to keep all the wisdom and
strength that regret, disillusion, and sad-
ness contain? Or might we not say
that it is with the roots of the happiness
we cherish within as with roots of great
trees? The oaks that are subject the
most to the stress of the storm thrust their
roots the most staunchly and firmly, deep
down in eternal soil ; and the fate that un-
justly pursues us is no more aware of what
comes to pass in our soul, than the wind is

aware of what happens below in the earth.
19 289
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 99.

Here let us note how great is the power,
how mysterious the attraction, of veritable
happiness. Something of a hush comes
over Saint-Simon’s stirring narrative as one
of the members of the “little flock”
passes through the careless, triumphant
crowd, unceasingly busy with intrigue
and salutation, petty love and petty
triumph, amidst the marble staircases
and magnificent halls of Versailles. Saint-
Simon goes calmly on with his story ; but
for one second we seem to have compared
all this jubilant vanity and ephemeral re-
joicing, this brazen-tongued falsehood that
secretly trembles, with the serene, unvary-
ing loftiness of those strenuous, tranquil
souls. Itisas though thereshould suddenly
appear in the midst of a band of children

—who are plucking flowers, it may be,
290
Wisdom and Destiny

stealing fruit, or playing forbidden games
—a pfiest or an aged man, who should go
on his way, letting fall not one word
of rebuke. The games are suddenly
stopped; startled conscience awakens;
and unbidden thoughts of duty, reality,
truth, rush in on the mind; but with
men no more than with children are
impressions of long duration, though
they spring from the priest, or the sage,
or only the thought that has passed and
gone on its way. But it matters not,
they have seen; and the human soul,
for all that the eyes are only too will-
ing to close or turn away, is nobler
than most men would wish it to be, for
it often troubles their peace; and the soul
is quick to declare its preference for that
it has seen, and fain would abandon its
enforced and wearisome idleness. And
although we may smile and make merry

as the sage disappears in the distance, he
2gI
Wisdom and Destiny

has, though he know it not, left a clear
track in the midst of our error and folly,
where, haply, it still will abide for a long
time to come. And when the sudden
hour of tears bursts upon us, then most
of all shall we see it enwrapped in light.
We find again and again, in Saint-Simon’s
story, that sorrow no sooner invades a
soul somewhat loftier than others, some-
what nearer to life perhaps, than it speedily
flies for comfort to one it has thus seen
pass by in the midst of the uneasy silence
and almost malevolent wonder, that in
this world too often attend the footsteps
of a blameless life. It is not our wont
to question happiness closely in the days
when we deem ourselves happy ; but when
sorrow draws nigh, our memory flies to
the peace that somewhere lies hidden: the
peace that depends not on the rays of the
sun, or the kiss that has been withheld, or
the disapproval of kings. At such moments

202
Wisdom «nd Destiny

we go not to those who are happy, as we
once were happy; for we know that this
happiness melts away before the first fret-
ful gesture of fate. Would you learn
where true happiness dwells, you have
only to watch the movements of those
who are wretched, and seek consolation.
Sorrow is like the divining-rod that used
to avail the seekers of treasure or of clear
running water; for he who may have it
about him unerringly makes for the house
where profoundest peace has its home.
And this is so true that we should be
wise, perhaps, not to dwell with too much
satisfaction on our own peace of mind
and tranquillity, on the sincerity of our
own acquiescence in the great laws of
life, or rely too complacently on the
duration of our own happiness, until
such time as the instinct of those who
suffer impels them to knock at our door,
and their eyes can behold, shining bright
293
Wisdom and Destiny

on the threshold, the steady, unwavering
flame of the lamp that burns on for ever.
Yes; only they, it may be, have the right
to deem themselves safe to whose arms
there come to weep those whose eyes are
heavy with tears. And indeed there are
not a few in this world whose inner smile
we can only behold when our eyes have
been cleansed by the tears that lay bare
the mysterious sources of vision; and
then only do we begin to detect the
presence of happiness that springs not
from the favour or gleam of an hour,
but from widest acceptance of life. Here,
as in much beside, desire and necessity
quicken our senses. The hungry bee will
discover the honey, be it hid never so deep
in the cavern; and the soul that mourns
will spy out the joy that lies hidden in its
retreat, or in most impenetrable silence.

294
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 100.

Destiny begins when consciousness
wakes and bestirs itself within man; not
the passive, impoverished consciousness
of most souls, but the active conscious:
ness that will accept the event, whatever
it may be, as an imprisoned queen will
accept a gift that is offered to her in
her cell. If nothing should happen,
your consciousness yet may create im-
portant event from the manner in which
it regards the mere dearth of event; but
perhaps to each man there occurs vastly
more than is needed to satisfy the
thirstiest, most indefatigable conscious-
ness. I have at this moment before me
the history of a mighty and passionate
soul, whom every adventure that makes
for the sorrow or gladness of man would
seem to have passed by with averted

295
Wisdom and Destiny

head. It is of Emily Bronté I speak,
than whom the first fifty years of this
century produced no woman of greater
or more incontestable genius. She has
left but one book behind her, a novel,
called “ Wuthering Heights,” a curious
title, which seems to suggest a storm on
a mountain peak. She was the daughter
of an English clergyman, the Rev.
Patrick Bronté, who was the most in-
significant, selfish, lethargic, pretentious
creature the mind can conceive. There
were only two things in life that seemed
of importance to him — the purity of his
Greek profile, and solicitude for his
digestion. As for Emily’s unfortunate
mother, her whole life would seem to
have been spent in admiring this Greek
profile and in studying this digestion.
But there is scarcely need to dwell upon
her existence, for she died only two years
after Emily’s birth. It is of interest to
296
Wisdom and Destiny

note, however—if only to prove once
again that, in ordinary life, the woman
is usually superior to the man she has
had to accept —that long after the death
of the patient wife a bundle of letters
was found, wherein it was clearly revealed
that she who had always been silent
was fully alive to the indifference and
fatuous self-love of her vain and indolent
husband. We may, it is true, be con-
scious of faults in others from which
we are ourselves not exempt; although
to discover a virtue, perhaps, we must
needs have a germ of it in us. Such
were Emily’s parents. Around her, four
sisters and one brother gravely watched
the monotonous flight of the hours. The
family dwelling, where Emily’s whole life
was spent, was in the heart of the York-
shire Moors, at a place called Haworth, a
gloomy, desolate village ; barren, forsaken,
and lonely.
297
Wisdom and Destiny

There can never have been a childhood
and youth so friendless, monotonous, and
dreary as that of Emily and her sisters.
There came to them none of those happy
little adventures, bright gleams from
the unexpected, which we broider and
magnify as the years go by, and store at
last in our soul as the one inexhaustible
treasure acquired by the smiling memory
of life. Each day was the same, from
first to last— lessons, meals, household
duties, work beside an old aunt, and
long solitary walks that these grave little
girls would take hand in hand, speaking
but seldom, across the heather now gay
with blossom, now white beneath the
snow. At home the father they scarcely
saw, who was wholly indifferent, who
took his meals in his room, and would
come down at night to the rectory
parlour and read aloud the appallingly
dreary debates of the House of Commons:

298
Wisdom and Destiny

without, the silence of the adjoining
graveyard, the great treeless desert, and
the moors that from autumn to summer
were swept by the pitiless wind from
the north.

The hazard of life — for in every life
some effort is put forth by fate—the
hazard of life removed Emily three or
four times from the desert she had
grown to love, and to consider — as will
happen to those who remain too long
in one spot —the only place in the world
where the plants, and the earth, and the
sky were truly real and delightful. But
after a few weeks’ absence the light
would fade from her ardent, beautiful
eyes; she pined for home; and one or
another of the sisters must hasten to bring
her back to the lonely vicarage.

In 1843 —she was then twenty-five —
she returned once again, never more to
go forth until summoned by death.

299
Wisdom and Destiny

Not an event, or a smile, or a whisper
of love in the whole of her life to
the day of this final return. Nor was
her memory charged with one of those
griefs or deceptions, which enable the
weaklings, or those who demand too
little of life, to imagine that passive
fidelity to something that has of itself
collapsed is an act of virtue; that in-
activity is justified by the tears wherein
it is bathed; and that the duty of life
is accomplished when suffering has been
made to yield up all its resignation and
sorrow.

Here, in this virgin soul, whose past
was a blank, there was nothing for
memory or resignation to cling to;
nothing before that last journey, as
nothing after; unless it be mournful
vigils by the side of the brother she
nursed — the almost demented brother,

whose life was wrecked by his idleness
300
Wisdom and Destiny

and a great unfortunate passion; who
became an incurable opium-eater and
drunkard. Then, shortly before her
twenty-ninth birthday, on a December
afternoon, as she sat in the little white-
washed parlour combing her long black
hair, the comb slipped from the fingers
that were too weak to retain it, and fell
into the fire; and death came to her,
more silent even than life, and bore her
away from the pale embraces of the two
sisters whom fortune had left her.

§ 101.

“No touch of love, no hint of fame,
no hours of ease lie for you across the
knees of fate,” exclaims Miss Mary Robin-
son, who has chronicled this existence, in
a fine outburst of sorrow. And truly,
viewed from without, what life could be

more dreary and colourless, more futile
301
Wisdom and Destiny

and icily cold, than that of Emily Bronté?
But where shall we take our stand, when
we pass such a life in review, so as best to
discover its truth, to judge it, approve it,
and love it? How different it all appears
as we leave the little parsonage, hidden
away on the moors, and let our eyes rest
on the soul of our heroine! It is rare
indeed that we thus can follow the life of
a soul in a body that knew no adventure;
but it is less rare than might be imagined
that a soul should have life of its own,
which hardly depends, if at all, on incident
of week or of year. In “ Wuthering
Heights ” — wherein this soul gives to the
world its passions, desires, reflections,
realisations, ideals, which is, in a word, its
real history —in ‘‘ Wuthering Heights”
there is more adventure, more passion,
more energy, more ardour, more love, than
is needed to give life or fulfilment to

twenty heroic existences, twenty destinies
302
Wisdom and Destiny

of gladness or sorrow. Not asingle even)
ever paused as it passed by her threshold,
yet did every event she could claim take
place in her heart, with incomparable force
and beauty, with matchless precision and
detail. We say that nothing ever hap-
pened ; but did not all things really happen
to her much more directly and tangibly
than unto most of ub, seeing that every-
thing that took place about her, everything
that she saw or heard, was transformed
within her into thoughts and feelings, into
indulgent love, admiration, adoration of
life? What matter whether the event fall
on our neighbour’s roof or our own?
The rain-drops the cloud brings with it
are for him who will hold out his vessel ;
and the gladness, the beauty, the peace, or
the helpful disquiet that is found in the
gesture of fate, belongs only to him who
has learned to reflect. Love never came
to her: there fell never once on her ear
393
Wisdom and Destiny

the lover’s magical footfall; and, for all
that, this virgin, who died in her twenty-
ninth year, has known love, has spoken of
love, has penetrated its most impenetrable
secrets to such a degree, that those who
have loved the most deeply must sometimes
uneasily wonder what name they should
give to the passion they feel, when she
pours forth the words, exaltation and mys-
tery of a love beside which all else seems
pallid and casual. Where, if not in her
heart, has she heard the matchless words
of the girl, who speaks to her nurse
of the man who is hated and _ harassed
by all, but whom she wholly adores?
“My great miseries in this world have
been Heathcliff’s miseries, and I watched
and felt each from the beginning; my
great thought in living is himself. If
all else perished, and fe remained, J
should still continue to be; and if all
else remained, and he were annihilated,
304

&e
Wisdom and Destiny

the universe would turn to a mighty
stranger; I should not seem a part of
it. My love for Linton is like the
foliage in the woods: time will change
it, I’m well aware, as winter changes the
trees. My love for Heathcliff resembles
the eternal rocks beneath —a source of
little visible delight, but necessary. Nelly,
I am Heathcliff! He’s always, always in
my mind: not as a pleasure, any more
than I am always a pleasure to myself,
but as my own being. . . . I do not love
him because he’s handsome, but because
he’s more myself than I am. Whatever
our souls are made of, his and mine are
the same.” ...

She has but little acquaintance with the
external realities of love, and these she
handles so innocently at times as almost
to provoke a smile; but where can she
have acquired her knowledge of those
inner realities, that are interwoven with

20 305
Wisdom and Destiny

all that is profoundest and most illogical
in passion, with all that is most unexpected,
most impossible, and most eternally true?
We feel that one must have lived for thirty
years beneath burning chains of burning
kisses to learn what she has learned; to
dare so confidently set forth, with such
minuteness, such unerring certainty, the
delirium of those two predestined lovers of
“ Wuthering Heights” ; to mark the self-
conflicting movements of the tenderness
that would make suffer and the cruelty
that would make glad, the felicity that
prayed for death and the despair that
clung to life; the repulsion that desired,
the desire drunk with repulsion — love
surcharged with hatred, hatred staggering’
beneath its load of love... .

And yet it is known to us — for in this
poor life of hers all lies open—that she
neither loved nor was loved. May it
be true then that the last word of an

306
Wisdom and Destiny

existence is only a word that destiny whis-
pers low to what lies most hidden in our
heart? Have we indeed an inner life
that yields not in reality to the outer life ;
that is no less susceptible of experience
and impression? Can we live, it matters
not where, and love, and hate, listening
for no footfall, spurning no creature?
Is the soul self-sufficient ; and is it always
the soul that decides, a certain height
once gained? Is it only to those whose
conscience still slumbers that events can
seem sad or sterile? Did not love and
beauty, happiness and adventure — did not
all that we go in search of along the
ways of life congregate in Emily Bronté’s
heart? Day after day passed by, with
never a joy or emotion; never a smile that
the eye could see or the hand could touch ;
wherefore none the less did her destiny
find its fulfilment, for the confidence
within her, the eagerness, hope, animation,
3°7
Wisdom and Destiny

all were astir; and her heart was flooded
with light, and radiant with silent
gladness. Of her happiness none can
doubt. Not in the soul of the best
of all those whose happiness has lasted
the longest, been the most active, diver-
sified, perfect, could more imperishable
harvest be found than in the soul Emily
Bronté lays bare. If to her there came
nothing of all that passes in joy and in
love, in sorrow, passion, and anguish,
still did she possess all that abides when
emotion has faded away. Which of the
two will know more of the marvellous
palace — the blind man who lives there,
or the other, with wide-open eyes, who
perhaps only enters it once? “To live,
not to live”” — we must not let mere words
mislead us. It is surely possible to live
without thought, but not to think, with-
out active life. The essence of the joy

or sorrow the event contains lies in the
308
Wisdom and Destiny

idea the event gives birth to: our own
idea, if we are strong; that of others,
if we are weak. On your way to the
grave there may come a thousand external
events towards you, whereof not one, it
may be, shall find within you the force
that it needs to turn to moral event.
Then may you truthfully say, and then
only, “I have perhaps not lived.” The
intimate happiness of our heroine, as of
every human being, was in exact pro-
portion to her morality and her sense
of the universe; and these indeed are
the clearings in the forest of accidents
whose area it is well we should know
when we seek to measure the happiness
a life has experienced. Who that had
giined the altitude of peace and com-
prehension whereon her soul reposed
would still be wrought to feeble, bitter,
unrefreshing tears by the cares and
troubles and deceptions of ordinary life?
3°99
Wisdom and Destiny

Who would not then understand why
it was that she shed no tears, unlike
so many of her sisters, who spend their
lives in plaintive wanderings from one
broken joy to another? The joy that is
dead weighs heavy, and bids fair to crush
us, if we cause it to be with us for ever;
which is as though a wood-cutter should
refuse to lay down his load of dead wood
For dead wood was not made to be eter-
nally borne on the shoulder, but indeed
to be burned, and give forth brilliant
flame. And as we behold the flames that
soar aloft in Emily’s soul, then are we
as heedless as she was of the sorrows of
the dead wood. No misfortune but has
its horizon, no sadness but shall know
comfort, for the man who in the midst
of his suffering, in the midst of the grief
that must come to him as to all, has
learned to espy Nature’s ample gesture

beneath all sorrow and suffering, and has
310
Wisdom and Destiny

become zware that this gesture alone is
real. “he sage, who is lord of his life,
can neve1 truly be said to suffer.” wrote
an admircble woman, who had known
much sorrow herself. “It is from the
heights abeve that he looks down on his
life, and if to-day he should seem to
suffer, it is only because he has allowed
his thoughts to incline towards the less
perfect part of his soul.” Emily Bronté
not only breathes life into tenderness,
loyalty, and love, but into hatred and
wickedness also; nay, into the very
fiercest revengefulness, the most deli-
berate perfidy; nor does she deem it in-
cumbent upon her to pardon, for pardon
implies only incomplete comprehension.
She sees, she admits, and she loves. She
admits the evil as well as the good, she
gives life to both; well knowing that
evil, when all is said, is only righteousness
strayed from the path. She reveals to us
gii
Wisdom and Destiny

—not with the moralist’s arbitrary for-
mula, but as men and years reveal the
truths we have wit to grasp—the final
helplessness of evil, brought face to face
with life; the final appeasement of all
things in nature as well as in death,
“which is only the triumph of life over
one of its specialised forms.’ She shows
how the dexterous lie, begotten of genius
and strength, is forced to bow down be-
fore the most ignorant, puniest truth;
she shows the self-deception of hatred
that sows, all unwilling, the seeds of
gladness and love in the life that it
anxiously schemes to destroy. She is,
perhaps, the first to base a plea for in-
dulgence on the great law of heredity ;
and when, at the end of her book, she
goes to the village churchyard and visits
the eternal resting-place of her heroes,
the grass grows green alike over grave
of tyrant and martyr; and she wonders
312
Wisdom and Destiny

how “any one could ever imagine unquiet
slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet
earth.”

§ 102.

I am well aware that here we are deal-
ing with a woman of genius; but genius
only throws into bolder relief all that
can, and actually does, take place in the
lives of all men; otherwise were it genius
no longer, but incoherence or madness.
It becomes clear to us, after a time, that
genius is by no means confined to the
extraordinary; and that veritable supe-
riority is composed of elements that every
day offers to every man. But we are not
considering literature now; and indeed,
not by her literary gifts, but by her inner
‘life, was Emily Bronté comforted; for it
by no means follows that moral activity
waits on brilliant literary powers. Had
she remained silent, nor ever grasped a

313
Wisdom and Destiny

pen, still had there been no diminution
of the power within her, of the smile and
the fulness of love; still had she worn
the air of one who knew whither her
steps were tending; and the profound
certainty that dwelt within her still had
proclaimed that she had known how to
make her peace, far up on the heights,
with the great disquiet and misery of the
world. We should never have known of
her — that is all.

There is much to be learned from
this humble life, and yet were it
perhaps not well to hold it forth as
an example to such as already incline
overmuch to resignation, for these it
might mislead. It is a life that would
seem to have been wholly passive —and
to be passive is not good for all. She
died a virgin in her twenty-ninth year:
and it is sad to die a virgin. Is it not
the paramount duty of every human

314
Wisdom and Destiny

being to offer to his destiny all that
can be offered to the destiny of man?
And indeed we had far better leave be-
hind us work unfinished than life itself
incomplete. It is good to be indifferent
to vain or idle pleasures; but we have
no right almost voluntarily to neglect
the most important chances of indis-
pensable happiness. The soul that is
unhappy may have within it cause for
noble regret. To look largely on the sad-
ness of one’s life is to make essay, in the
darkness, of the wings that shall one day
enable us to soar high above this sadness.
Effort was lacking, perhaps, in Emily
Bronté’s life. In her soul there was
wealth of passion and freedom and daring,
but in her life timidity, silence, inertness,
conventions, and prejudice; the very things
that in thought she despised. This is the
history often of the too-meditative soul.
But it is difficult to pass judgment on an
315
Wisdom and Destiny

entire existence ; and here there were much
to be said of the devotion wherewith she
sacrificed the best years of her youth to an
undeserving, though unfortunate, brother.
Our remarks then, in a case such as this,
must be understood generally only; but
still, how ‘long and how narrow is the
path that leads from the soul to life!
Our thoughts of love, of justice and
loyalty, our thoughts of bold ambition
—what are all these but acorns that fall
from the oak in the forest? and must
not thousands and tens of thousands be
lost and rot in the lichen ere a single tree
spring to life? “She had a beautiful
soul,” said, speaking of another woman,
the woman whose words I quoted above,
“4 wide intellect, and tender heart,
but ere these qualities could issue
forth into life they had perforce to
traverse a straitened character. Again

and again have I wondered at this want
316
Wisdom and Destiny

of self-knowledge, of return to self. The
man who would wish us to see the deepest
recess of his life will begin by telling us
all that he thinks and he feels, will lead
us to his point of view; we are conscious,
perhaps, of much elevation of soul; then,
as we enter with him still further into his
life, he tells of his conduct, his joys and
his sorrows ; and in these we detect not
a gleam of the soul that had shone through
his thoughts and desires. When the trum-
pet is sounded for action, the instincts
rush in, the character hastens between;
but the soul stands aloof: the soul, which
is man’s very highest, being like the princess
who elects to live on in arrogant penury
rather than soil her hands with ordinary
labour.” Yes, alas, all is useless till such
time as we have learned to harden our
hands; to transform the gold and silver of
thought into a key that shall open, not the
ivory gate of our dreams, but the very door
317
Wisdom and Destiny

of this our dwelling — into a cup that shall
hold, not only the wondrous water of
dreams, but the living water that falls,
drop by drop, on our roof—into scales,
not content vaguely to balance schemes
for the future, but that record, with un-
erring accuracy, what we have done
to-day. The very loftiest ideal has taken
no root within us, so long as it penetrate
not every limb, so long as it palpitate not
at our finger-tip. Some there are whose
intellect profits by this return to self;
with others, the character gains. The
first have clearest vision for all that con-
cerns not themselves, that calls them not
to action; but it is above all when stern
reality confronts them, and time for action
has come, that the eyes of the others glow
bright. One might almost believe in
there being an intellectual conscious-
ness, languidly resting for ever upen an
immovable throne, whence she issues
318
Wisdom and Destiny

commands to the will through faithless or
indolent envoys, and amoral consciousness,
incessantly stirring, afoot, at all times
ready to march. It may be that this
latter consciousness depends on the former
— indeed who shall say that she is not the
former, wearied from long repose, wherein
she has learned all that was to be learned ;
that has at last determined to rise, to
descend the steps of inactivity and sally
forth into life? And all will be well, if
only she have not tarried so long that her
limbs refuse their office. Is it not pre-
ferable sometimes to act in opposition to
our thoughts than never dare to act in
accord with them? Rarely indeed is the
active error irremediable ; men and things
are quickly on the spot, eager to set it
right; but they are helpless before the
passive error that has shunned contact
with the real. Let all this, however, by
no means be construed into meaning that
319
Wisdom and Destiny

the intellectual consciousness must be
starved, or its growth arrested, for fear
lest it outpace the moral consciousness.
We need have no fear; no ideal conceived
by man can be too admirable for life to
conform with it. To float the smallest
act of justice or love requires a very
torrent of desire for good. For our con-
duct only to be honest we must have
thoughts within us ten times loftier than
our conduct. Even to keep somewhat
clear of evil bespeaks enormous craving
for good. Of all the forces in the world
there is none melts so quickly away as the
thought that has to descend into every-
day life; wherefore we must needs be
heroic in thought for our deeds to pass
muster, or at the least be harmless.

320
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 103.

Let us once again, and for the last
time, return to obscure destinies. They
teach us that, physical misfortune apart,
there is remedy for all; and that to
complain of destiny is only to expose
our own feebleness of soul, We are
told in the history of Rome how a cer-
tain Julius Sabinus, a senator from Gaul,
‘headed a revolt against the Emperor
Vespasian, and was duly defeated. He
might have sought refuge among the
Germans, but only by leaving his young
wife, Eponina, behind him, and he had
not the heart to forsake her. At
moments of disaster and sorrow we
learn the true value of life; nor did
Julius Sabinus welcome the idea of death.
He possessed a villa, beneath which

there stretched vast subterranean caverns,
21 321
Wisdom and Destiny

known only to him and two freedmen.
This villa he caused to be burned, and
the rumour was spread that he had
sought death by poison, and that his
body was consumed by the flames.
Eponina herself was deceived, says Plu-
tarch, whose story I follow, with the
additions made thereto by the Comte
de Champagny, the historian of Anto-
ninus; and when Martialis the freedman
told her of her husband’s self-slaughter,
she lay for three days and three nights
on the ground, refusing all nourishment.
When Sabinus heard of her grief, he
took pity and caused her to know that
he lived. She none the less mourned
and shed floods of tears, in the daytime,
when people were near, but when night
fell she sought him below in his cavern.
For seven long months did she thus
confront the shades, every night, to be
with her husband; she even attempted
322
Wisdom and Destiny

to help him escape; she shaved off his
hair and his beard, wrapped his head
round with fillets, disguised him, and
then had him sent, in a bundle of clothes,
to her own native city. But his stay
there becoming unsafe, she soon brought
him back to his cavern; and herself
divided her stay between town and the
country, spending her nights with him,
and from time to time going to town
to be seen by her friends. She became
big with child, and, by means of an
unguent wherewith she anointed her body,
her condition remained unsuspected by
even the women at the baths, which at
that time were taken in common. And
when her confinement drew nigh she
went down to her cavern, and there,
with no midwife, alone, she gave birth
to.two sons, as a lioness throws off her
cubs. She nourished her twins with her
milk, she nursed them through childhood ;
323
Wisdom and Destiny

and for nine years she stood by her
. husband in the gloom and the dark-
ness. But Sabinus at last was discovered
and taken to Rome He surely would
seem to have meritec Vespasian’s pardon.
Eponina led forth the two sons she had
reared in the depths of the earth, and
said to the Emperor, “These have I
brought into the world and fed on my
milk, that we might one day be more
to implore thy forgiveness.” Tears
filled the eyes of all who were there;
but Czsar stood firm, and the brave
Gaul at last was reduced to demand
permission to die with her husband. “I
have known more happiness with him
in the darkness,” she cried, “than thou
ever shalt know, O Cesar, in the full
glare of the sunshine, or in all the
splendour of thy mighty empire.”
Who that has a heart within him can
doubt the truth of her words, or think
324
Wisdom and Destiny

without longing of the darkness that so
great a love illumined? Many a dreary,
miserable hour must have crawled by as
they crouched in their hiding-place; but
are there any, even among those who care
only for the pettiest pleasures of life, who
would not rather love with such depth
and fervour in what was almost a tomb,
than flaunt a frigid affection in the heat
and light of the sun? Eponina’s mag-
nificent cry is the cry of all those whose
hearts have been touched by love; as it
is also the cry of those whose soul has
discovered an interest, duty, or even a
hope, in life. The flame that inspired
Eponina inspires the sage also, lost in
monotonous hours as she in her gloomy
retreat. Love is the unconscious sun of
our soul; and it is when its beams are
most ardent, and purest, that they bear
most surprising resemblance to those that
the soul, aglow with justice and truth,
325
Wisdom and Destiny

with beauty and majesty, has kindled
within itself, and adds to, incessantly. Is
not the happiness that accident brought
- to the heart of Eponina within reach of
every heart, so the will to possess it be
there? Is not all that was sweetest in
this love of hers —the devotion of self,
the transformation of regret into happi-
ness, of pleasure renounced into joy that
abides in the heart for ever; the interest
awakened each day by the feeblest glimmer
of light, so it fall on a thing one ad-
mires; the immersion in radiance, in
happiness susceptible of infinite expansion,
for one has only to worship the more — are
not all these, and a thousand other forces
no less helpful, no less consoling, to be
found in the intensest life of our soul, of
our heart, of our thoughts? And was
Eponina’s love other than a sudden light-
ning flash from this life of the soul, come

to her, all unconscious and unprepared?
326
Wisdom and Destiny

Love does not always reflect; often in-
deed does it need no reflection, no search
into self, to enjoy what is best in thought ;
but, none the less, all that is best in love
is closely akin to all that is best in
thought. Suffering seemed ever radiant
in aspect to Eponina, because of her love;
but cannot this thing that love brings
about, all unknowing, by fortunate acci-
dent, be also achieved by thought, medi-
tation, by the habit of looking beyond
our immediate trouble, and being more
joyous than fate would seem to demand?
To Eponina there came not a sorrow
but kindled yet one more torch in the
gloom of her cavern; and does not the
sadness that forces the soul back into
itself, to the retreat it has made, kindle
deep consolation there? And, as the
noble Eponina has taken us back to the
days of persecution, may we not liken
such sorrow to the pagan executioner
327
Wisdom and Destiny

who, suddenly touched by grace, or per-
haps admiration, in the very midst of the
torture that he was inflicting, flung him-
self down headlong at the feet of his
victim, speaking words of tenderest sym-
pathy ; who demanded to share her suffer-
ing, and finally besought, in a kiss, to be
told the way to her heaven.

§ 104.

Go where we will, the plentiful river of
life flows on, beneath the canopy of
heaven. It flows between prison walls,
where the sun never gleams on its waters ;
as it flows by the palace steps, where all
is gladness and glory. Not our concern
the depth of this river, or its width, or
the strength of its current, as it streams
on for ever, pertaining to all; but of
deepest importance to us is the size and
the purity of the cup that we plunge in

328
Wisdom and Destiny

its waters. For whatever of life we
absorb must needs take the form of this
cup, as this, too, has taken the form of
our thoughts and our feelings; being
modelled, indeed, on the breast of our
intimate destiny as the breast of a goddess
once served for the cup of the sculptor of
old. Every man has the cup of his
fashioning, and most often the cup he
has learned to desire. When we murmur
at fate, let our grievance be only that she
grafted not in our heart the wish for, or
thought of, a cup more ample and per-
fect. For indeed in the wish alone does
inequality lie, but this inequality vanishes
the moment it has been perceived. Does
the thought that our wish might be
nobler not at once bring nobility with it;
does not the breast of our destiny throb
to this new aspiration, thereby expanding
the docile cup of the ideal — the cup whose
metal is pliable still to the cold stern hour
329
Wisdom and Destiny

of death? No cause for complaint has
he who has learned that his feelings are
lacking in generous ardour, or the other
who nurses within him a hope for a little
more happiness, a little more beauty, a
little more justice. For here all things
come to pass in the way that they tell us
it happens with the felicity of the elect,
of whom each one is robed in gladness,
and wears the garment befitting his stature.
Nor can he desire a happiness more per-
fect than the happiness which he possesses,
without the desire wherewith he desired
at once bringing fulfilment with it. If I
envy with noble envy the happiness of
those who are able to plunge a heavier
cup, and more radiant than mine, there
where the great river is brightest, I have,
though I know it not, my excellent share
of all that they draw from the river, and
my lips repose by the side of their lips on
the rim of the shining cup.
33°
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 105.

It may be remembered perhaps that,
before these digressions, we spoke of a
woman whose friend asked her, wonder-
ingly, “Can any man be worthy of
your love?” The same question might
have been asked of Emily Bronté, as
indeed of many others ; and in this world
there are thousands of souls, of lottiest
intention, that do yet forfeit the best
years of love in constant self-interrogation
as to the future of their affections. Nay,
more —in the empire of destiny it is to
the image of love that the great mass of
complaints and regrets come flocking;
the image of love around which hover
sluggish desire, extravagant hope, and
fears engendered of vanity. At root of
ali this is much pride, and counterfeit
poetry, and falsehood. The soul that is

33!
Wisdom and Destiny

misunderstood is most often the one that
has made the least effort to gain some
knowledge of self. The feeblest ideal, the
one that is narrowest, straitest, most often
will thrive on deception and fear, on
exaction and petty contempt. We dread
above all lest any should slight, or pass
by unnoticed, the virtues and thoughts,
the spiritual beauty, that exist only in
our imagination. It is with merits of this
nature as it is with our material welfare
—-hope clings most persistently to that
which we probably never shall have the
strength to acquire. The cheat through
whose mind some momentary thought of
amendment has passed, is amazed that
we offer not instant, surpassing homage
to the feeling of honour that has, for
brief space, found shelter within him.
But if we are truly pure, and sincere, and
unselfish; if our thoughts soar aloft of
themselves, in all simpleness, high above
332
Wisdom and Destiny -

vanity or instinctive selfishness, then are
we far less concerned than those who
are near us should understand, should
approve, or admire. Epictetus, Marcus
Aurelius, Antoninus Pius are not known
to have ever complained that, men could
not understand them. They hugged no
belief to themselves that something ex-
traordinary, incomprehensible, lay buried
within them; they held, on the contrary,
that whatever was best in their virtue was
that which it needed no effort for all
men to grasp and admit. But there are
some morbid virtues that are passed by
unnoticed, and not without reason — for
there will almost always be some superior
reason for the powerlessness of a feeling
— morbid virtues to which we often
ascribe far too great an importance; and
that virtue will surely be morbid that
we rate over highly and hold to deserve
the respectful attention of others. In a
333
Wisdom and Destiny

morbid virtue there is often more harm
than there is in a healthy vice; in any
event it is further removed from truth;
and there is but little to hope for when we
are divided from truth. As our ideal be-
comes loftier so does it become more real;
and the nobler our soul, the less does it
dread that it meet not a soul of its stature;
for it must have drawn near unto truth,
in whose neighbourhood all things must
take of its greatness. When Dante had
gained the third sphere, and stood in the
midst of the heavenly lights, all shining with
uniform splendour, he saw that around
him naught moved, and wondered was he
standing motionless there, or indeed draw-
ing nearer unto the seat of God? So he
cast his eyes upon Beatrice; and she
seemed more beautiful to him; wherefore
he knew that he was approaching his
goal. And so can we too count the steps
that we take on the highway of truth,
334
Wisdom and Destiny

by the increase of love that comes for all
that goes with us in life; the increase of
love and of glad curiosity, of respect and
of deep admiration.

§ 106.

Men, as a rule, sally forth from their
homes seeking beauty and joy, truth and
love; and are glad to be able to say to
their children, on their return, that they
have met nothing. To be for ever com-
plaining argues much pride; and those
who accuse love and life are the ones who
imagine that these should bestow some-
thing more than they can acquire for
themselves. Love, it is true, like all else,
claims the highest possible ideal; but every
ideal that conforms not with some strenu-
ous inward reality is nothing but falsehood
—sterile and futile, obsequious falsehood.
Two or three ideals, that lie out of our

335
Wisdom and Destiny

reach, will suffice to paralyse life. It is
wrong to believe that loftiness of soul is
governed by the loftiness of desire or
dream. The dreams of the weak will be
often more numerous, lovelier, than are
those of the strong; for these dreams
absorb all their energy, all their activity.
The perpetual craving for loftiness does
not count in our moral advancement if it
be not the shadow thrown by the life we
have lived, by the firm and experienced
will that has come in close kinship with
man. ‘Then, indeed, as one places a rod
at the foot of the steeple to tell of its
height by the shadow, so may we lead forth
this craving of ours to the midst of the
plain that is lit by the sun of external
reality, that thus we may tell what relation
exists between the shadow thrown by the
hour and the dome of eternity.

336
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 107.

It is well that a noble heart should
await a great love; better still that this
heart, all expectant, should cease not
from loving; and that, as it loves, it
should scarcely be conscious of its desire
for more exquisite love. In love as in
life, expectation avails us but little;
through loving we learn to love; and it
is the so-called disillusions of pettier love
that will, the most simply and faithfully,
feed the immovable flame of the mightier
love that shall come, it may be, to illumine
the rest of our life.

We treat disillusions often with scantiest
justice. We conceive them of sorrowful
countenance, pale and discouraged ; where-
as they are really the very first smiles of
truth. Why should disillusion distress
you, if you are a man of honest intention,

22 337
Wisdom and Destiny

if you strive to be just, and of service; if
you seek to be happy and wise? Would
you rather live on in the world of your
dreams and your errors than in the world
that is real? Only too often does many a
promising nature waste its most precious
hours in the struggle of beautiful dream
against inevitable law, whose beauty is
only perceived when every vestige of
strength has been sapped by the exquisite
dream. Iflove has deceived you, do you
think that it would have been better for
you all your life to regard love as some-
thing it is not, and never can be? Would
such an illusion not warp your most sig-
nificant actions; would it not for many
days hide from you some part of the truth
that you seek? Or if you imagine that
greatness lay in your grasp, and disillusion
has taken you back to your place in the
second rank; have you the right, for the
rest of your life, to curse the envoy of
338
Wisdom and Destiny

truth? For, after all, was it not truth
your illusion was seeking, assuming it to
have been sincere? We should try to
regard disillusions as mysterious, faithful
friends, as councillors none can corrupt.
And should there be one more cruel than
the rest, that for an instant prostrates
you, do not murmur to yourself through
your tears that life is less beautiful than
you had dreamed it to be, but rather that
in your dream there must have been some-
thing lacking, since real life has failed to
approve. And indeed the much-vaunted
strength of the strenuous soul is built up
of disillusions only, that this soul has
cheerfully welcomed. Every deception,
and love disappointed, every hope that
has crumbled to dust, is possessed of a
strength of its own that it adds to the
strength of your truth; and the more dis-
illusions there are that fall to the earth at
your feet, the more surely and nobly will
339
Wisdom and Destiny

great reality shine on you—even as the
rays of the sun are beheld the more
clearly in winter, as they pierce through
the leafless branches of the trees of the
forest.

§ 108.

And if it be a great love that you seek,
how can you believe that a soul shall be
met with of beauty as great as you dream
it to be, if you seek it with nothing but
dreams? Have you the right to expect
that definite words and positive actions
shall offer themselves in exchange for
mere formless desire, and yearning, and
vision? Yet thus it is most of us
act. And if some fortunate chance
at last accords our desire, and places us
in presence of the being who is all we
had dreamed her to be —are we entitled
to hope that our idle and wandering

340
Wisdom and Destiny

cravings shall long be in unison with her
vigorous, established reality? Our ideal
will never be met with in life unless we
have first achieved it within us to the
fullest extent in our power. Do you
hope to discover and win for yourself a
loyal, profound, inexhaustible soul, loving
and quick with life, faithful and power-
ful, unconstrained, free : generous, brave,
and benevolent —if you know less well
than this soul what all these qualities
mean? And how should you know, if
you have not loved them and lived in
their midst, as this soul has loved and
lived? Most exacting of all things, un-
skilful, thick-sighted, is the moral beauty,
perfection, or goodness that is still in
the shape of desire. If it be your one
hope to meet with an ideal soul, would
it not be well that you yourself should
endeavour to draw nigh to your own
ideal? Be sure that by no other mee
341
Wisdom and Destiny

will you ever obtain your desire. And
as you approach this ideal it will dawn
on you more and more clearly how for-
tunate and wisely ordained it has been
that the ideal should ever be different
from what our vague hopes were ex-
pecting. So too when the ideal takes
shape, as it comes into contact with life,
will it soften, expand, and lose its rigidity,
incessantly growing more noble. And
then will you readily perceive, in the
creature you love, all that which is
eternally true in yourself, and solidly
righteous, and essentially beautiful; for
only the good in our heart can advise us
of the goodness that hides by our side.
Then, at last, will the imperfections of
others no longer seem of importance to
you, for they will no longer be able to
wound your vanity, selfishness, and ignor-
ance; imperfections, that is, which have
ceased to resemble your own; for it is
342
Wisdom and Destiny

the evil that lies in ourselves that is
ever least tolerant of the evil that dwells
within others.

§ 109.

Let us have the same confidence in
love that we have in life; for confidence
is of our essence; and the thought that
works the most harm in all things is the
one that inclines us to look with mistrust
on reality. I have known more than one
life that love broke asunder; but if it had
not been love, these lives would no doubt
have been broken no less by friendship or
apathy, by doubt, hesitation, indifference,
inaction. For that only which in itself
is fragile can be rent in the heart by love;
and where all is broken that the heart
contains, then must all have been far too
frail. There exists not a creature but
must more than once have believed that

343
Wisdom and Destiny

his life was crushed; but they whose lik
has indeed been shattered, and has fallen
to ruin, owe their misfortune often to
some strange vanity of the very ruin.
Fortunate and unfortunate hazards there
must of necessity be in love as in all
the rest of our destiny. It may so come
about that one whose spirit and heart are
abounding with tenderness, energy, and
the noblest of human desires, shall meet,
on his first setting forth, all unsought,
the soul that shall satisfy each single
craving of love in the ecstasy of per-
manent joy; the soul that shall content
the loftiest yearning no less than the
lowliest: the vastest, the mightiest no
less than the daintiest, sweetest: the most
eternal no less than the most evanescent.
He, it may be, shall instantly find the
heart whereto he can give—the heart
which will ever receive —all that is best
in himself. It may happen that he shal!
344

¢
Wisdom and Destiny

at once have attained the soul that per-
chance is unique; the soul that is satisfied
always, and always filled with desire; the
soul that can ever receive many thousand
times more than is given, and that never
fails to return many thousand times more
than it receives. For the love that the
years cannot alter is built up of exchanges
like these, of sweet inequality ; and naught
do we ever truly possess but that which
we give in our love; and whatever our
love bestows, we are no longer alone to
enjoy.

§ IIo.

Destinies sometimes are met with that
thus are perfectly happy; and each man,
it may be, is entitled to hope that such
may one day be his; yet must his hope
be never permitted to fasten chains
on his life. All he can do is to make

345
Wisdom and Destiny

preparation one day to deserve such a
love; and he will be most patient and
tranquil who incessantly strives to this
end. It might so have happened that
he whom we spoke of just now should,
day after day, from youth to old age,
have passed by the side of the wall
behind which his happiness lay waiting,
enwrapped in too secret a silence. But
if happiness lie yonder side of the wall,
must despair and disaster of necessity
dwell on the other? Is not something of
happiness to be found in our thus being
able to pass by the side of our happi-
ness? Is it not better to feel that a
mere slender chance — transparent, one
almost might call it—is all that extends
between us and the exquisite love that
we dream of, than to be divided for
ever therefrom by all that is worthless
within us, undeserving, inhuman, ab-
normal? Happy is he who can gather
346
Wisdom and Destiny

the flower, and bear it away in his
bosom; yet have we no cause to pity
the other who walks until nightfall,
steeped in the glorious perfume of the
flower no eyes can behold. Must the
life be a failure, useless and valueless,
that is not as completely happy as it
possibly might have been? It is you
yourself would have brought what was
best in the love you regret; and if, as
we said, the soul at the end possess only
what it has given, does not something
already belong to us when we are inces-
santly seeking for chances of giving?
Ah yes—I declare that the joy of a
perfect, abiding love is the greatest this
world contains; and yet, if you find not
this love, naught will be lost of all
you have done to deserve it, for this
will go to deepen the peace of your heart,
and render still braver and purer the calm
of the rest of your days.
347
Wisdom and Destiny

§ 111.

And, besides, we always can love. If
our own love be admirable, most of the
joys of admirable love will be ours. In
the most perfect love, the lovers’ happi-
ness will not be exactly the same, be
their union never so close; for the better
of the two needs must love with a love
that is deeper; and the one that loves
with a deeper love must be surely the
happier. Let your task be to render
yourself worthy of love—and this even
more for your own happiness than for
that of another. For be sure that when
love is unequal, and the hours come
clouded with sorrow, it is not the wiser
of the two who will suffer the most —
not the one that shows more generosity,
justice, more high-minded passion. The
one who is better will rarely become

348
Wisdom and Destiny

the victim deserving our pity. For, in-
deed, to be truly a victim it must be
our own faults, our injustice, wrong-
doing, beneath which we suffer. How-
ever imperfect you be, you still may
suffice for the love of a marvellous
being; but for your love, if you are not
perfect, that being will never suffice.
If fortune one day should lead to your
dwelling the woman adorned with each
gift of heart and of intellect—such a
woman as history tells of, a heroine of
glory, happiness, love — you will still be
all unaware if you have not learned; your-
self, to detect and to love these gifts
in actual life; and what is actual life
to each man but the life that he lives
himself? All that is loyal within you
will flower in the loyalty of the woman
you love; whatever of truth there abides
in your soul will be soothed by the
truth that is hers; and her strength of
349
Wisdom and Destiny

character can be only enjoyed by that which
is strong in you. And when a virtue
of the being we love finds not, on the
threshold of our heart, a virtue that re-
sembles it somewhat, then is it all un-
aware to whom it shall give the gladness
it brings.

§ 112.

And whatever the fate your affections
may meet with, do you never lose cour-
age; above all, do not think that, love’s
happiness having passed by you, you will
never, right up to the end, know the
| great joy of human life. For though
happiness appear in the form of a torrent,

or a river that flows underground, of a

whirlpool or tranquil lake, its source
| still is ever the same that lies deep down
in our heart; and the unhappiest man of
all men can conceive an idea of great
joy. It is true that in love there is

35°
Wisdom and Destiny

ecstasy that he doubtless never will know;
but this ecstasy would leave deep melan-
choly only in the earnest and faithful
heart, if there were not in veritable love
something more stable than ecstasy, more
profound and more steadfast; and all
that in love is profoundest, most stable
and steadfast, is profoundest in noble
lives too—is most stable and steadfast
in them. Not to all men is it given to
be hero or genius, victorious, admirable
always, or even to be simply happy in
exterior things; but it lies in the power
of the least favoured among us to be
loyal, and gentle, and just, to be gener-
ous and brotherly; he that has least
gifts of all can learn to look on his
fellows without envy or hatred, without
malice or futile regret; the outcast can
take his strange, silent part (which is
not always that of least service) in the
gladness of those who are near him;
35!
Wisdom and Destiny

he that has barely a talent can still
learn to forgive an offence with an ever
nobler forgiveness, can find more excuses
for error, more admiration for human
word and deed; and the man there are
none to love can love, and reverence, love.
And, acting thus, he too will have drawn
near the source whither happy ones flock
—oftener far than one thinks, and in the
most ardent hours of happiness even —
the source over which they bend, to make
sure that they truly are happy. Far
down, at the root of love’s joys—as at
the root of the humble life of the up-
right man from whom fate has withheld
cher smile—it is confidence, sincerity,
| generosity, tenderness, that alone are
truly fixed and unchangeable. Love
‘throws more lustre still on these points of
light, and therefore must love be sought.
For the greatest advantage of love is
that it reveals to us many a peaceful and
352
Wisdom and Destiny

gentle truth. The greatest advantage of
love is that it gives us occasion to love

and admire in one person, sole and |
unique, what we should have had neither
knowledge nor strength to love and ad-
mire in the many; and that thus it
expands our heart for the time to come.
And at the root of the most marvellous

love there never is more than the simplest
felicity, an adoration, a tenderness within
the understanding of all, a security, faith,
and fidelity all can acquire, an intensely
human admiration, devotion—and _ all
these the eager, unfortunate heart could
know too, in its sorrowful life, had it
only a little less impatience and bitterness,
a little more initiative and energy.

THE END

353